


The Good Life

by lostintranslationagain



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: AU - Derek and Spencer are actual brothers, And murder of course, Autistic Spencer Reid, BAMF Spencer Reid, Case Fic, Disability, Gen, Possibly Autistic Spencer, Team as Family, but just to keep the plot moving, mentions of child abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-25
Updated: 2019-12-18
Packaged: 2020-03-17 12:27:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 20
Words: 59,394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18965236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lostintranslationagain/pseuds/lostintranslationagain
Summary: "As they walked to the bullpen, the pair began to draw stares from other agents. Derek had told them he was bringing his adopted brother to visit Quantico for the week. He had told him his brother needed extra help, had special needs, but not much else, because truthfully… he had no idea how to say 'Our mom is dead and I'm my brother's new guardian' without breaking down."Wherein Derek and Spencer are actual brothers trying to figure out how to deal with a newly-shattered life, and its going to take the entire team to pick up the pieces and make them whole again.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Multiple chapters of this fic were originally posted in 2012 on ff.net and then the story sat in a corner unfinished till I decided to dust it off this year and finish it. I've changed a lot as an author and as a person in the last seven years so I am doing a rewrite and posting here (as I like AO3 much more these days). I'll probably cross post once I catch up to the chapter count on ff.net.

_Its my birthday tomorrow. I'm going to the FBI headquarters with my brother. I will be there all week. I am planning on reading books the whole time, even though when I told my brother that he shook his head at me. He wants his friends to be my new friends._

Derek Morgan couldn't have been more proud, or more nervous, at the sight of his brother clipping on an FBI visitors pass. Spencer had filled out the paperwork himself and handled the entire exchange with the agent behind the front desk. Of course, Derek had arranged for the week long visitors pass several days before, but he wasn't planning on telling Spencer that. His younger brother believed he had just gotten himself into Quantico.

"Come on Spencer," Derek said, motioning for his brother to join him as they went through the security checkpoint. Spencer grabbed onto Derek's arm with one hand and continued to mess with his badge with the other. His worn leather messenger bag was slung around his skinny frame.

As they walked through the checkpoint, the security guard nodded to Derek. "SSA Morgan," he greeted kindly. Morgan smiled warmly at the man in return. The guard, Daniel, was a retired Marine and Derek was sure he knew how to kill someone without leaving a trace, but his face and wrinkles reminded Derek of a gentle grandfather. The guard took a peek at Spencer's guest badge and winked at Derek. "Visiting Agent Morgan," he greeted.

"My name isn't 'visiting agent,'" Spencer objected. "And your name isn't SSA."

Derek laughed. "Daniel's just messing with you."

Spencer studied the guard's face for several seconds until he was satisfied that that was the truth. "You can call me Dr. Morgan," he finally said.

"Sure thing, Dr. Morgan," Daniel nodded, putting on a serious façade for Spencer, unaware of how painfully true that statement was.

Derek shrugged at the guard with a small grin on his face, trying to convey his thankfulness at the guard's attempt at making his brother smile, and his apologies that it hadn't worked. They got through the checkpoint and went to the elevators. As they walked, Derek felt Spencer tighten his grip more and more until Derek had to extract himself from Spencer's grasp in the elevators.

"Okay, kid, I thought you wanted to come to my work this week?" Derek said questioningly.

Spencer only nodded.

"Then why the vice grip on my arm?" he asked. Spencer didn't answer. "Not going to talk?"

Spencer shook his head.

"That's gonna make it tough to meet my friends," Derek pointed out. Spencer ran his fingers through his scraggly hair, a sign of worry, then suddenly hit his thigh with a tightly curled fist.

"Hey!" Derek said, quickly grabbing Spencer's arms. "You either tell me what's wrong or you show me in your speech book. If you hit yourself, I'm going to have to take you home."

Spencer silently struggled to get out of Derek's grasp and slowly Derek let go. As soon as he did, Spencer brought his fist down to strike his leg again.

"No," Derek said firmly, catching his arms again mid-strike. "You can't hit yourself just because you are upset." He wanted to threaten to take away the FBI trip again, but he knew it was an empty threat. He couldn't miss work and Spencer couldn't stay alone in his apartment. Tears sprang up uninvited to Derek's eyes and he tried desperately to blink them back.

The only thing that could make the situation worse is if Derek lost it, too.

His brother squinted his eyes, trying to analyze Derek's new expression. He couldn't figure out why Derek was suddenly sad. Was it because he had tried to hit himself? He hadn't meant to. Sometimes his body got ahead of his mind. He hated when his brother was upset – that's what tears meant. But he hadn't hit Derek, he had hit himself. He was sure of it. Why was Derek upset? He couldn't stand to see his brother upset. Spencer brought his hands up to cover his ears and squeezed his eyes shut.

"Damn it," Derek muttered, watching Spencer withdraw into himself. He still lightly held onto Spencer's arms but now he used his grip to tug the younger man's hands away from his ears. "Spencer, listen. I'm not upset with you. I promise."

The doors of the elevator opened and Derek gently led Spencer out of the elevator. The change in environment caused Spencer to open his eyes but it wasn't enough to distract him. Spencer pointed to Derek's now-dry eyes suspiciously.

"I'm not upset with you," Derek assured him again. "We can talk about it later. Right now, I want you to meet my friends. Are you ready?"

Spencer nodded hesitantly. He knew this was something important he needed to do, whether or not he was ready.

"Still no talking?" Derek asked. When he didn't get a response he asked, "Why not? Show me in your speech book."

Spencer dutifully pulled out a leather-bound notebook from his messenger bag which contained both his chicken scratch and Fran's loopy cursive. Derek knew which page Spencer was about to read. It was undoubtedly his least favorite page in the entire book.

"I am not talking because I am repeating words," Spencer read, then clamped his mouth shut.

Derek hated that page. It was painfully true to who his brother was. The statement was short, devoid of emotion, full of fact. But the reason behind the statement was emotion through and through. Spencer often repeated words over and over, usually when he was nervous. Spencer wasn't very skilled socially, so any situation involving unfamiliar people was nerve-wracking for him.

When he came to live with the Morgans he rarely talked. He had his lips pursed constantly. When he did speak, it was as if his mouth couldn't keep the words in and he would repeat what someone else had just said, over and over again until he was so worked up he was hitting himself, throwing chairs, lashing out as his new family members. It would only end Fran or Derek could get him into one of the wrestling holds the social worker had taught them to use. It took several months before any of the family even saw Spencer breathe through his mouth, lips parted instead of pursed. It took just as long before he could answer a question verbally without spiraling into self injury and aggression. Derek shuttered to think about the abuse Spencer must have faced before adoption.

"Okay," Derek agreed. "Talk whenever you're ready." Derek wondered if his brother knew that that page would always break him down. He held out his hand but Spencer declined with a shake of his head, his arms hugging himself protectively. "I'll show you my desk first."

As they walked to the bullpen, the pair began to draw stares from other agents. Prentiss and JJ were both at Prentiss' desk looking at case files. Derek had told them he was bringing his adopted brother to visit for the week. He had told him his brother needed extra help, had special needs, but not much else, because truthfully… he had no idea what to say.

Derek signaled at the team to wait just a minute before coming over as the brothers arrived at Derek's desk. "This is it," he said.

"Its dirty," Spencer whispered, surveying the desk.

Derek laughed. "There's a method to the madness," he assured Spencer. His brother was undoubtedly referring to the stack of disheveled case files on his desk. Derek turned on his computer and logged in. A picture of his family popped up as his background. "You know them?" he asked.

"You know them? You know them?" Spencer repeated softly. "There's me, and you, mom, our family." Derek could tell Spencer was honestly touched that he was on Derek's computer background.

Quietly JJ and Emily came up to Derek's desk. "Hey," JJ said gently, getting the two men's attention.

Derek took a deep breath. "Spencer, these are two of my friends and teammates, JJ and Emily."

Spencer looked up and gave each a brief smile.

"He's not in a talking mood," Derek said, hoping that by saying that Spencer would choose to prove him wrong.

Sure enough, Spencer took the bait and opened his mouth to protest but didn't know what to say. There was a brief look of panic directed at Derek until Derek tapped Spencer’s messenger bag. He quickly pulled out his speech book, found one of the first pages, and read aloud. "When you meet new people you say hello my name is Spencer. It is nice to meet you." He looked back up at the ladies and said very quickly, "Hello my name is Spencer. It is nice to meet you."

It was hard not to smile at Spencer's genuine attempt. "Its nice to meet you too," JJ said. She thought about holding her hand out but decided against it, seeing how Spencer immediately coiled back into himself, holding his book to his chest. "Morgan told us you're staying the whole week?”

"Morgan told us you're staying the whole week? Morgan… Morgan?" Spencer repeated, looking toward his brother for clarification. Who was Morgan and why did he know Spencer's plans?

"That's me," Derek said. "We like to call each other by our last names here."

“SSA Morgan,” Spencer supplied, remembering Daniel’s words from earlier.

“And Dr. Morgan,” Derek teased his brother back.

JJ and Prentiss exchanged confused looks. “Since when did you add ‘doctor’ to the resume?” Prentiss asked dryly.

“Not me. Him,” Derek said, nodding toward Spencer, “I got the looks in the family, the kid got the brains.”

Derek gently pushed Spencer into his desk chair and grabbed the large stack of case files. He dumped all but one on the ground and then opened the chosen one up. The usual assortment of gruesome murder scenes, autopsy pictures, and case notes greeted them; Emily and JJ both visibly winced as Spencer picked up a particularly disturbing picture of a naked woman covered only in her own blood and bruising. The subject matter didn’t seem to faze Spencer. "While you're here you're going to do some work," Derek said. Spencer looked up at him doubtfully, unsure if Derek was teasing or not. Derek pulled out a large notebook from his desk and set it next to the case file. "I want you to read each of these victims’ histories and write a list of everything they have in common. You can use my computer if you need to do some research.”

Spencer nodded, grateful to both have something to occupy his mind and also to get him out of socializing, and immediately got to work.

Derek waited a second until he knew his brother was mentally gone, then walked with Emily and JJ to Emily's desk. While not out of earshot of Spencer, he knew Spencer's concentration was fully on his project now. "He's not having a great day," Derek explained. "There’s a strict routine, apparently, and ‘visiting Quantico’ obviously isn’t on the usual daily schedule. I showed up yesterday in Chicago, and here we are today."

"This is all probably overwhelming," JJ said. "How is he taking it?"

Derek felt like someone had punched him in the gut.

"I haven't told him about mom yet," he confessed. "He thinks our mom is on vacation. Hell, he thinks he is on vacation. My sister is shipping some of his stuff out here this week. I've got to tell him before he finds half his bedroom has been fedex-ed to my front porch."

JJ gave him a sympathetic smile. "When’s the funeral?"

"Not until next week," he said. "My mom had a lot of foster kids. Sarah and Desiree want to make sure as many can get there as possible."

"That's kind of them," Emily said.

"There were probably 20 kids in and out while I was growing up, more after I moved out. We probably wouldn't care so much, except at one point Spencer was one of those foster kids."

The ladies nodded in understanding. "What did Hotch say?" Emily asked.

Derek gave them a deep sigh and their eyes widened. "You didn't tell him?" JJ asked incredulously.

"He knows I had to go to Chicago to visit family,” Derek answered, aware of how ridiculously large the info gap was between what he had told Hotch and his new reality. Suddenly, Derek looked like a very broken man. "How am I supposed to tell Spencer our mom is dead?"

If they were taken aback by Derek's sudden openness, they didn't show it. Derek was normally such a private man. Since the case in Chicago about a year ago, public information about his life had taken a huge leap forward, but it hadn't grown much since then. It was second nature to profile each other and really, to profile one's self. It was just as natural to slip into that profile, to live it out. Derek lived his profile perfectly: alpha male, untrusting, his caring nature coming from a natural instinct to protect the pack. Until several days ago, the team had no idea he even had a brother.

Their team leader still didn't know. As if on cue, Hotch appeared on the walkway. He squinted down at the skinny, pale, young man sitting at Derek's desk. There couldn't have been a more opposite looking person from Derek. In any other circumstance, the body swap might have even been comical. Spener was certainly the opposite of what Hotch had expected to see. Emily noticed Hotch first and discretely motioned to JJ and Derek. Hotch locked eyes on Derek, silently ordering him upstairs for an explanation.

"Good luck, Morgan," Emily said quietly.

He was going to need it.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I want to clarify ages briefly. Spencer came to the Morgan’s at age 10, and I wanted to give Spencer and Derek at least a few years to grow up together before Derek would have gone to college. So that puts Derek about 6 years older than Spencer and Spencer in his mid twenties.

Hotch's stare was burning the back of Derek's neck as he walked back to his desk.

"Spencer," he said, trying to get his brother's attention. Spencer already had a list pages long of similarities in the victims’ histories. Some of the items were silly – "all victims had parents (obviously), all victims had hair," but some were connections that Derek would have never thought of. "All victims got raises in the month before they died," Spencer had written most recently.

"Spencer," Derek tried again.

Derek hated to do it – he knew the consequence – but he also knew what would happen if he kept Hotch waiting much longer. He reached out and put his hand on his brother’s shoulder. Spencer jumped back in surprise. "Don't touch me!" he shouted. The room stilled as every person in the room cast their gaze toward the brothers. After a moment, they turned away again and busied themselves in their own tasks again, an awkward buzz of conversation and keyboard clicks masking the deafening silence.

"I'm sorry, kid," Derek said, though his voice conveyed nothing but strain and exasperation. "Did you hear me say your name?"

"Did you hear me say your name? I can't stop my ear drums from taking in sound or my brain from processing it. Sound is processed in the temporal lobe." It was the pissiest answer, full on annoying-younger-brother.

"Okay, did you pay attention to me saying your name?" Derek tried again, trying to keep the edge of frustration out of his voice. He could feel Hotch's eye boring into him.

"The thalamus determines what I 'pay attention to,'" Spencer retorted. Then Derek could almost see the gears shift in Spencer's brain. "Its really cool actually. It does much more than just determine what you pay attention to. The thalamus…"

"… Kid," Derek said, cutting him off. Hotch's patience he was sure was wearing thin. "I’m sorry I touched you. I needed you to know that I have to go to a meeting up there –,” he gestured up the catwalk with a jerk of the head without actually looking up at Hotch. “If you need anything, Emily is sitting right there. Do you need to write anything in your speech book?"

"Do you need to write anything in your speech book?" Spencer repeated. "No. I can do it." He hoped Derek came back soon. He didn't want to have to ask the girls where the bathroom was.

Upstairs, Derek wished his only concern was where the bathroom was.

"You should have told me," Hotch said. The sternness in his voice was betrayed by the hurt in his eyes.

"I know."

"You have to trust me."

"What was I supposed to say?" Derek asked. "That my mom is dead and now I have temporary guardianship of brother? That he requires 24-hour care and there’s nobody else in my family who can care for themselves much less Spencer, too. What was I supposed to say?"

"That would have been a good start.”

A silence lingered between the two men until Derek took a deep, defeated breath. "I have to do this," Derek said. "Hotch, I'm sorry. I know this puts the team--.”

Hotch waved him off, “Morgan…”

“… I don't know what I'm doing, but I have to do this. I have to take care of him."

Hotch came around the desk and uncharacteristically put a hand on Derek's shoulder. "Whatever you need," he said solemnly. It was a promise.

"I appreciate that, Hotch," Derek said, nodding in understanding.

"I'll arrange your time off next week for the funeral. After that, we can look at a leave of absence," Hotch said.

"I don't want to leave the team, but if I have to to take care of my brother…"

Hotch's grip tightened on Derek's shoulder. "I don't want to lose you," Hotch said firmly. "We'll find a way."

Derek felt the now-familiar tears spring up again. "I appreciate that," he repeated, trying to swallow them back. He had no idea how Hotch would make good on that promise. He opened the door for Derek then followed the man out. They stood silently on the walkway for several seconds, both watching Spencer.

"When are you going to tell him?" Hotch asked.

“As soon as I figure out how… I’d rather talk down a hundred unsubs than tell him this.” Derek sighed. "Our mom was his everything. Now he’s all alone.”

"No, he's not," Hotch said. "You're his family. And your family is our family."

A few tears spilled over. "Can I ask a personal question?" he asked.

Hotch already knew what Derek was going to ask. "How did I tell Jack?" he guessed. Derek nodded. "It wasn't easy. I think Jack already knew. He was quiet for a long time, took a while for him to get back to being a kid. Has anything like this ever happened before to Spencer?"

"No one knows what happened to his biological parents. He was 9 when he was abandoned at a gas station. Came to our family when he was 10. My mom wanted to adopt him right away even though he wasn’t the easiest kid to deal with. She thought it was just emotional trauma, then later autism."

"Was he ever diagnosed?" Hotch asked.

"School psychologists wanted to and I'm sure its in a file somewhere but my mom wouldn't hear it. I think she thought that with enough therapy or work or something… she always had some new plan going," Derek explained. "Who knows what he went through as a kid. I think she didn’t want another label making things worse for him if maybe she could just love the trauma outta him.” Hotch opened his mouth but Derek preempted him, “I know,” he said, agreeing with Hotch’s unspoken rebuttal. “But there was no arguing with Fran Morgan.”

The two were interrupted by JJ. "Sorry," she said quietly. The word lingered in the air – she was sorry about interrupting their conversation, sorry that Spencer's first day was about to be ruined by a case, sorry that Morgan was now going to have to scramble to find someone to watch over Spencer, sorry that Morgan's mother was dead… "Sorry," she said again, this time with more strength in her voice. "PD in Loring, Virginia just called with a case they should have called us about a month ago. I already ran it by Gideon"

She handed Hotch a case file which he quickly thumbed through. He nodded his agreement and JJ quickly descended the stairs from the catwalk to touch base with Emily. Hotch turned to Derek. "What do you want to do?" he asked. Derek opened his mouth to find himself completely at a loss. Before he could answer (though it wouldn't have been much of an answer), Hotch interrupted. "We can discuss it later," he said, sensing Derek's effette.

Derek nodded his thanks and followed Hotch down the stairs. To his surprise, instead of walking right into the conference room he turned left toward Derek's desk.

Interrupting Spencer was a delicate art. Talking to him wouldn't catch his attention and touching him could start him on a path of anxiety and overload that usually ended in a meltdown or even worse, an outburst of anger that was so unusual otherwise. The only option left was to move into his line of sight and slowly draw him out of "the zone," as their mother had called it. Hotch watched as Derek coyly laid his hand on Spencer's notebook. Spencer didn't seem to notice; he continued writing furiously. Derek moved his hand to Spencer's pen. Spencer let out a frustrated grunt, causing both Derek and Hotch to stifle a smile. Spencer tried to write but Derek held on to the top of the pen and wiggled it, unable to resist the urge to tease his younger brother.

"Stop it," Spencer mumbled.

Success.

"Spencer, I want you to meet someone," Derek said, gently tugging the pen out of his brother's hand. Spencer looked up and met Hotch's eyes. He immediately sat back, his eyes widening. "This is my boss and friend Aaron. We call him Hotch.” Derek knew the layers of meaning in the introduction wouldn’t be lost on Hotch.

"The etymology of the words 'Aaron' and 'Hotch' have no common morphemes or semantics," Spencer objected. "The origin of 'Aaron' is ancient Hebrew meaning 'mountain.' 'Hotch' is a Scottish word. To falter. The two are unrelated."

"Its nice to meet you, Spencer," Hotch said, extending his hand to Spencer.

Derek's stomach knotted as he saw anxiety surge through Spencer, but true to his word, he held his own. "Its nice to meet you, Spencer,” he echoed, looking purposefully at Derek and blindly holding out his hand. Hotch had to move his hand quite a way to grab Spencer's and when he did Spencer jumped a little.

"I have to go into a meeting," Derek said.

"Another one?" Spencer complained.

"Sorry," Derek said. "I told you that when you came to work with me we would both be working, right?" Spencer nodded. "Well, I need you to work on this list. And I need to do some work in that conference room over there." Derek pointed across to the room where the rest of the team was already gathered.

"Just over there?" Spencer asked, wringing his hands together. He seemed to be trying to rub the handshake off his palms.

"If I go anywhere else, I'll tell you. I promise," Derek said.

"I want to come with you," Spencer said obstinately.

To Hotch it looked like Spencer was pouting, but Derek knew his younger sibling was scared. He threw a look at Hotch, silently asking permission. Hotch's first instinct was to protect him, but one look at Derek's desk told him that Derek had already shown Spencer a myriad of disturbing crime scene photos. If Derek didn't have a problem with it, Hotch didn't either. He nodded his consent.

"Okay," Derek agreed.

"Please – I have to!" Spencer almost shouted.

"I said okay," Derek said again, then laughed as Spencer smiled shyly at himself. "Why do you want to go so bad?" Spencer looked down at his speech book and clamped his mouth shut, but didn't turn to a page. Whatever the reason, Derek wasn't going to know – at least for the moment. "Grab your pen and notebook, lets go."

Spencer jumped up, pen, notebook, and speech book in hand. Hotch watched as Derek and Spencer moved toward each other as they came together from opposite sides of the desk. Derek held out his arm slightly and Spencer latched on, the movement so practiced that Hotch was sure neither had given it any conscious thought. It reminded him of how he would grab Jack's hand in a parking lot.

Hotch stole a glance at Derek's computer. He instantly recognized Derek's family on the computer screen. His mother was beaming sandwiched between her four children. Derek looked massive compared to his two sisters. All four looked like they were trying to force controlled smiles during a fit of laughter. Spencer was in the picture too, tucked under his mom's arm. He wasn't laughing at whatever the rest of the family was, but he looked happy all the same.

Watching Derek and Spencer walk toward the conference room, Hotch couldn't help but wonder what would happen to Spencer when Derek finally told him. Taking one last look at the picture on the computer before heading into the conference room himself, Hotch promised himself he would do whatever he had to do to help.


	3. Chapter 3

Everyone was already settled in the conference room when the three walked in. JJ stood next to the flat screen, clicker in hand, ready to present. Emily's mouth opened slightly in surprise as Spencer ambled in, his grip tightening on Derek to the point that it was getting difficult for either man to walk. Gideon took in the scene, no expression registering on his face. Derek straightened a bit, acutely aware that he and his brother were being profiled.

"Spencer, stop pulling on me. Stand up straight," Derek whispered. As irrational (and horrible) as it was, he didn't want Spencer's current state to be Gideon's first profile-able impression. Suddenly he felt like he was back in high school, trying to navigate his brother through the cafeteria for the first time. Whispering teenagers, profiling FBI agents, their eyes all felt the same. Derek gestured to two vacant chairs. "Sit down," he whispered.

"Stand up. Sit down," Spencer mumbled. "Stand up. Sit down. Those are opposite directions, you know."

"Life's not fair," Derek mumbled back, more seriously than Spencer knew. A briefing called like this usually meant they had a tough case on their hands. It was time for Derek to get into his own zone, so to speak. He opened Spencer's notebook to a new page and made sure that Spencer had his pen ready, then threw all his concentration into JJ's presentation.

To her credit, the uneasy glances she shared with Hotch and Gideon would have been easy to miss, but they were there, and Derek sat up even straighter. "Loring, Virginia," JJ began, as the first picture popped up on-screen of a map. "Small town, rural, but an unusually high crime rate. The drug rates are through the roof. Opioids mostly, but also a steady stream of the usual – meth, crack, heroin. There have been four murders in four months, each killing brutal. At first the police thought it was teenagers on meth or LCD."

JJ clicked through several pictures of women, all in their mid-twenties. Their "before" and "after" shots were sickening – beautiful, professional, women, all vibrant and full of life, juxtaposed next to pictures of their mutilated, bloodied, corpses.

"There is no discernable pattern,” she continued. “No signature. No souvenirs taken as far as the police can tell. First murder the unsub used a gun, the second a knife, the third and fourth seem almost… cannibalistic. Bite marks were found in the flesh of all four victims, but the cause of death of the last two... the ME said that it looked like the body had been filleted." JJ looked down at her notes. "'Like a Christmas ham,' to quote him directly," she finished with a sarcastically sweet smile.

"Sadist?" Emily threw out onto the table. "Male. A female likely couldn't, or wouldn't, dominate a victim so easily."

"Sadist," Spencer whispered several times, repeating the word. Derek tapped on his notebook, hoping Spencer would get absorbed in writing.

"Without a signature, how can we be sure this the work of a serial killer?" Derek asked, jumping in to cover Spencer's echolalia. "You said it – high crime rates, drug trips, and the victims look like easy targets. How many murders does Loring see?"

"Hardly any," JJ answered. "Most crime is petty theft, break-ins, consistent with rampant drug use. These are the only four murders the town has had in years. My guess is that a group of teenagers got their hands on some powerful drugs."

"I agree. Let’s advise the PD and send them a preliminary profile. I don't think we need to go down there," Hotch said.

"What day?"

All eyes turned to Spencer, including Derek's, who felt his stomach drop. "Not now, Spencer," he warned.

"What day?" Spencer asked again.

"We're staying here today. No trip to Loring," Derek told him, misunderstanding. If Spencer got wound up there would be no discreet exit of the room, no distraction big enough, no words that could be used to calm him back down from the melt down he was headed for.

Spencer pointed to the screen and repeated his question.

Hesitantly, JJ answered, "One per month, different dates, different times. Again, no real pattern. January 30, February 28, March 30, and April 28."

"What day?" Spencer repeated. Derek quickly flipped to a page in Spencer's book and pointed to the phrase "repeating words" and looked at his brother questioningly. Spencer shook his head and closed the book down on Derek's hand with force. "What day?" he asked again.

"All different days of the week," JJ told him.

Spencer was beginning to get upset. He brought his fist to his leg, ready to hit himself in frustration. "I know. Saturday, Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday," he said. "I mean what day?"

Aaron oscillated between impressed that Spencer had known what days of the week those dates fell on and impatient as is briefing was being disrupted. Obviously, his first impression of an impossibly quiet young man was untrue. He shot Derek a warning look.

"Spencer, if you want to stay in the meeting, you need to be quiet. Or use different words we can understand," Derek said as he took ahold of Spencer's fist. "And no hitting yourself." Spencer tried to squirm away but Derek's grip was too strong.

Spencer glowered at Derek. “Words we can understand,” he repeated, and also clearly making his choice. “If you want to stay in the meeting use different words we can understand.”

Derek eased up his grip even though Spencer looked no closer to unclenching his fist. “I know you’re trying,” he said quietly, barely able to be heard over Spencer’s continued echo. “Maybe we should take a break and it’ll come –.”

"Werewolves," Spencer finally burst out, cutting off Derek. His body instantly relaxed as if all the tension had exploded out of him in one word. Derek slowly released his grip completely. Spencer looked relieved, like he could breathe and think again.

The room stilled and Derek raised his eye brows in surprise. That was the last word any of them had expected Spencer to say. "Werewolves?" he questioned.

"Werewolves? January 30, February 28, March 30, April 28. What day? Werewolves," Spencer repeated. He sat back in his chair, satisfied he had found different words as Derek had instructed.

"Care to enlighten us?" Hotch asked, clearly unamused.

"Somehow the logical answer to 'What day?' is 'werewolves,'" Derek said. "I'm sorry, Hotch." It wasn't often Derek apologized – Hotch knew better than to continue riding him.

Slowly, the attention turned back to JJ but before she could speak, Garcia shot her hand up on the air. With the commotion Spencer made, nobody had noticed her arrival to the conference room. She stood in the doorway excitedly. "Oh! I get it!"

"Yes?" Gideon said, as if he were picking a child in classroom to answer a question.

"Werewolves. Bad asses of the supernatural world. They fight with vampires and make me a little…" she trailed off when she saw Hotch's face. "Lets just say that I felt much better about watching Twilight so obsessively when I found out that Taylor Lochner is legal. Anyways. Werewolves only transform on a full moon which we usually only have once a month. Because our calendar is Gregorian, not lunar, they fall on different days, different dates, and different times-."

"What time!" Spencer exclaimed, bolting straight up, finding the words for the question he had meant to ask all along. "What time did they die?"

JJ checked her notes. "All across the board. 6 am, 4 pm, 2 am, midnight, approximately."

"Werewolves," Spencer said again. "They all died at the exact time the moon was fullest. It's werewolves."

"That's our unsub's signature," Gideon exclaimed. "A kid on an acid trip might believe he's a werewolf but he's not checking his calendar and watch before he kills. This was pre-meditated."

"And the bite marks on the third and fourth victims," Emily added.

"But the first two were killed with a gun and a knife, that’s not a pattern," Spencer pointed out. It was a strangely logical statement from a man who had been shouting about werewolves only moments earlier.

"Its called evolving," Derek explained. "Serial killers begin like babies – they try things out, figure out what they like and what they don't like. As they kill more and more, they grow up. They figure out ways to kill better, get more comfortable, and usually they settle into a pattern. That is usually when we notice them and its also how we catch them."

"So the baby started off with a gun, then when he became an adult he began to bite people? Sounds backwards to me," Spencer said.

"Killing is backwards," Derek pointed out. "What did mom always tell you?"

"What did mom always tell you? Wash your hands," Spencer said seriously.

Derek laughed. "No, what did she tell you about life?"

"When you have the good life, fight to keep it. She made that up herself, its not a common idiom or saying nor does it have its roots in any American or British literature," Spencer said. "And she  _does_  tell me that. Not  _did_."

The room went silent again, the heaviness palpable. All eyes simultaneously shot to Derek. Spencer, thankfully unaware, turned back to his notebook and began to write "Suspect: werewolf cub" on the top line. As Derek smiled at his brother's profile, he felt tears well up in his eyes. Their mother had meant everything to Derek, but she was  _everything_  to Spencer. Derek recalled the countless times she had worked all night then cheerfully woken Spencer up, given him a bath, brushed his teeth, helped him eat, driven him to school, then fought twelve rounds with the administration to get him into a regular class for some subject Spencer already had down cold. He remembered the countless hours she spent teaching him to talk and developing his speech book, only to have Spencer throw the first one (and second, and third) into the fireplace, bathtub, and compost pile out of frustration. She taught him how to study alone in the library by numbering every book the Morgan’s owned to teach him the Dewey Decimal System. She could stay up for hours listening to Spencer tearfully babble on about physics or chemistry – stand in subjects for the haunting memories from his past he had never been able to talk about.

Derek couldn't stop the fragmented memories from flooding back to him and he pinched the corners of his eyes to keep from crying. Spencer turned back to him, a huge smile on his face. For all Spencer knew, he was on vacation and had just solved a quadruple homicide for the FBI. It was a dream come true. Suddenly Derek felt nauseous.

How could he possibly do this?

Spencer's smile faded as he slowly took note of his brother's face. "What’s wrong?" he asked. Derek knew every day that passed it would get harder and harder to tell him. Before he could say anything, Spencer spoke again. "You have the bad lips," he chastised.

Derek couldn’t help but smile, un-pursing his lips in the process. How many times had his mom told Spencer to "stop it with the bad lips" and open his mouth. "You know when you want to say something but you just don't have the right words?"

A solemn nod. "Yes. All the time."

"This is just going to have to be one of those times," Derek said. "I'll explain later."

Derek wasn't sure if that explanation would fly. Typically, Spencer didn't accept non-logical answers. This time though, Spencer nodded in the exact same way that Derek had earlier, giving him permission not to talk. Spencer opened his messenger bag and pulled out his speech book (speech book number seven, if Derek remembered right).

"Here," Spencer said, holding it out to Derek. "You need this more than I do."

"Thanks," Derek said, taking it into his hands. It was Spencer's most prized possession and the gesture was overwhelming.

Spencer then leaned over to whisper in Derek's ear. It was so unusual for Spencer to be so sensitive; Derek couldn't wait to hear what his brother could have possibly thought of to say to comfort him.

"Derek…" Spencer began hesitantly. "I… I need to use the bathroom."

Derek laughed, dissipating his tears. He tucked Spencer's speech book back in his messenger bag. The rest of the team, having plainly heard Spencer's "whisper" began to laugh, too.

"We'll drive out in an hour," Hotch ordered. The team stood up and began to file out, leaving Derek behind. The emptiness of the room felt eerie; he had never been at the FBI without a job to do, a purpose, or his patented swagger and confidence. He blinked a few times at the now-black TV screens.

Hotch lingered at the doorway, a gut feeling telling him he couldn’t leave Derek without backup on the home front. "Derek,” Hotch said, snapping Derek back into lucidity. “I’m sure Garcia would be thrilled to play host while we’re gone. Or… it can't be official, but if you two just happened to be in Loring on your leave of absence…"

Logic told him to stay with Garcia. Spend their days watching her hack her way into solving the Loring case. Find five goddamn minutes of silence to be able to think about how he was possibly going to tell Spencer that their mom was dead. Help his brother settle into his house – their house. Call his sisters back to start planning the funeral.

Everything in his body screamed at him to grab his go bag and run.

“We’ll see you in Loring,” Derek said.

This was going to be interesting.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: this chapter (and the next) contains use of the r-word. Its not addressed in this chapter, but it will be in the next.

_Derek said Mom would be happy I was in Loring helping the team. I tried to call her from his desk but he wouldn't let me. Two logical answers for this: one, Derek is lying and she is going to be angry with him when she finds out, or two, Derek is lying and she will be angry with me (and probably him too)._

Spencer turned the page of his new notebook back to the one titled: "Profile." The thought of his mom being angry with him made his head fuzzy and he was already feeling sick from the car ride. Loring was only an hour away by car and Derek was trying to fit in lessons about police procedure, profiling, and casework. Spencer, who either listened completely or not at all, had completely tuned out his brother. The trunk held a box of books about psychology and criminal justice. Spencer thought it was absolutely pointless for his brother to try to explain something second hand when he could read the source material for himself at 20,000 words a minute. His brother could be so illogical.

The team was driving up in their black FBI SUVs. Derek and Spencer had rented a car, one that was about to be christened with car sickness. "Derek!" Spencer suddenly shouted.

Derek, who had been completely sure just seconds earlier that Spencer was completely absorbed in his own thoughts, jumped and swerved the car. "What’s wrong?" Derek asked, taking his eyes off of the road for as long as he dared to attend to his brother.

"What’s wrong? I need to get out!"

Noticing how pale Spencer looked, especially against the black leather seats, Derek quickly pulled over and slowed to a stop.

"I need out!" Spencer shouted again.

Derek reached across Spencer and pulled the door handle, then pushed as forcefully as he could with the tips of his fingers to open the door. Then he reached down, painfully aware his body was directly under Spencer's mouth, and popped off the seatbelt. Spencer quickly jumped out of the car and made it a few feet before throwing up his lunch in the weedy grass bordering the road.

Once Spencer straightened up, Derek got out and offered his brother a water bottle. Spencer took it gratefully. "Get carsick?" Derek asked.

"Get carsick? Its called kinetosis," Spencer corrected, sputtering out the words between coughing and drinking.

"Okay, get kinetosis?"

"Yes. Unless I was actually poisoned," Spencer retorted.

"Actually poisoned?" Derek questioned, knowing he was in for a lecture.

"Kinetosis is caused by the brain believing that body has injected a toxin causing the inner ear to hallucinate motion while the eyes see only fixed objects. The body gets rid of the hallucinogen with episodes of emesis," Spencer said.

“Ok, now how ‘bout you tell me how you’re feeling and if its gonna happen in our rental car,” he said.

“Its not gonna happen in our rental car,” he said, though he looked unsure.

“Are you telling me the truth or just what you think I want to hear?” Derek asked. Spencer didn’t, or couldn’t, answer, but he was looking less pale and had stopped coughing, so Derek put his arm around Spencer’s bony shoulders and helped him back into the car. When Derek got in, he took Spencer's notebook and threw it in the backseat.

A surprised yelp escaped Spencer’s lips as he jerked forward and backward in his seat in protest.

Derek started up the car and pulled back onto the road. "You might know why your body gets kinetosis," he said. "But I know why you get carsick. Its from looking down while you're on the road. Keep your eyes on the lamp poles and you won't throw up. And stop it with the bad lips, kid." He tousled Spencer's long hair, teasing his younger brother.

"Will it be dangerous to be in Loring?" Spencer asked.

"Not at the police station," Derek answered.

"I don't need a gun?" Spencer asked.

Derek laughed. Then words slipped out before he even thought about them: "Mom would kill me if I gave you a gun!"

Suddenly, Derek was the one to feel nauseous. A wave passed over him and he bit the inside of his mouth, the pain focusing him as he regained his composure. Next to him, Spencer continued looking from lamppost to lamppost, unaware of Derek's anguish, unaware that his life had changed but nobody had told him yet. Derek wished he had some semblance of a plan to tell Spencer. He wasn't sure why he had thought a trip to Loring was a good idea a few hours ago except for that it represented the exact opposite of telling Spencer the truth. His eyes caught a welcome sign. It was an unusually ornate sign with new paint covering the aged wood. The lettering was looping cursive and there were flowered vines hand painted as a border.

Next to the welcome sign was another. Black spray paint on neon yellow poster board: "NOT SAFE - TURN AROUND."

"I definitely need a gun," Spencer muttered as they drove by.

Derek didn't comment this time. Instead, he picked up where he had left off in his crime solving lessons. Spencer was paying attention this time and Derek could practically see his mind absorbing the information. He knew that every word he said would be remembered. It wasn't as though Spencer would be making any arrests, but Derek knew he wouldn’t be able to keep Spencer from trying to solve a problem as big as finding a serial killer. And Spencer was the reason why the BAU had decided to come to Loring.

They pulled up to a small police station. The private parking lot was crammed with squad cars and black SUVs making it painfully obvious that the FBI were now on the case. Derek hoped that the unsub wasn't a narcissist – the attention would elate him. He explained this to Spencer as they walked into the station, stopping briefly to grab a box of books from the trunk.

The place was buzzing with activity. The team had probably only made it a half hour before them but already they were knee deep in the case. Hotch spotted them quickly from across the room and motioned to Derek. He pointed to a small room off the bullpen, corned off by windowed walls. Spencer latched on tighter to Derek's arm.

"Can I help you, sir?" an officer asked unhappily as Derek juggled the box of books and went for the latch gate in the waist high wall that separated the lobby from the rest of the station. Spencer immediately began repeating the question much to Derek's chagrin. Derek easily recognized the look on the cop's face as one he had seen too often – hatred.

Derek pulled his badge from his pocket. "SSA Morgan," he said.

The cop looked at him dubiously, then at Spencer in disgust. "And the retard?"

"My  _brother_ , Spencer," Derek said, praying to God that Spencer hadn't heard, but of course he had.

"And the retard? And the retard?" Spencer repeated quietly. Derek could feel the fabric on his shirt go taut around his bicep as Spencer grabbed a fistful nervously.

Derek's hand tightened into a fist on reflex but he managed to control his temper. "I've got my ID, man. Just let us through."

Derek tried not to show his frustration as the cop turned around to look for anyone who would approve of Spencer. The cop's eyes met Hotch's who again motioned to them. The cop reluctantly opened the gate for them.

"Thanks," Derek spat out. He and Spencer walked toward Hotch who was standing by a white board, already full of gruesome pictures. He looked at Spencer, who now had his head buried into Derek’s shoulder, then to Derek. He heard Spencer whisper the word _retard_ again.

"They've got the small town charm down," Derek commented sarcastically as way of explanation.

"They aren't thrilled with our presence here," Hotch said. "Looking at the forensics we have a preliminary profile but its broad, even for a small town. We're going to have to work closely with the locals."

Derek understood what Hotch meant: they needed to do everything they could not cause a rift between the PD and the BAU, even if it meant swallowing some much warranted anger.

"I informed them of our unique situation and they said Spencer could use the conference room," Hotch continued. Derek tried not to show his displeasure at others knowing his personal business. "And remember," Hotch continued, "you're technically on a leave of absence. I don't want you making any arrests or doing anything in an official capacity. You can stay here, profile, work with the team, review files. And under no circumstances are you to leave Spencer alone." Hotch dropped his voice to a deep whisper. "They obviously have made their opinion of him known. I don't want them to be exposed to each other any more than they need to be."

Derek nodded gratefully. He knew while Hotch wouldn't directly say it, he meant the separation to be for the protection and care of Spencer, not the benefit of the PD. "We'll go get settled," he said. Spencer still had a grip on the sleeve of Derek's shirt but oddly enough it wasn't the death grip anymore. To Derek's surprise, Spencer was looking around the police department wide-eyed.

"Come on, kid," Derek said, picking up the box of books from where he had let it rest on a desk. "I've got to do some work and I need you to start studying."

"Where's my office?" Spencer asked.

"This way," he said, motioning clumsily with the box toward the conference room. The large windows would give Derek the ability to keep an eye on his brother without his brother feeling spied upon. Hotch had already left the pair and was engaged in a conversation with the sheriff. Spencer was watching Hotch intently, making it difficult for Derek to move him forward. When they finally made it to the room, Derek sat Spencer down and opened the box.

"There are 13 books in here and my tablet, do you think you can make the books last two days?" he asked.

Spencer burst out laughing, drawing a strained smile from Derek. Spencer had such an odd sense of humor sometimes. "Two days? Two days?" Spencer repeated between laughs as if the idea was absolutely ridiculous.

"Okay, okay – one day."

“One hour,” Spencer corrected, still laughing.

Derek picked up his tablet from the top of the stack of books. "Want to use my computer first? We need to know everything about werewolves we possibly can and I don't think I brought any books on that." Actually, Derek was sure of it. Werewolfery wasn't a typical unsub MO.

Spencer cast a worried look at his brother. Before he could start getting worked up, Derek motioned for Spencer to grab his speech book. Spencer pulled it from his messenger bag and found another well worn page.

"Public speaking makes me nervous," he read.

Derek shrugged. "Fair enough," he said. "You don't have to share with the team. Would it help if you had a notebook? Then you could write your observations and research down and I could read them out loud for you."

"If you had a notebook, I could read them out loud for you," he confirmed.

The thought of Spencer's notebook brought another small smile to Derek's face, all the astute conclusions his brother had written in that notebook, namely that the police should put out a BOLO on a werewolf cub. "Okay, I'll get your notebook. Are you okay waiting for me in here?"

Derek could see the worry creep back into Spencer's features. "Hotch told me not to leave you alone?" Derek guessed. Spencer nodded. "I'm not leaving you alone," Derek said. "The whole team's out there. I'll be right back." He hoped Hotch hadn't meant the statement as literally as Spencer was interpreting it.

"I don't know them," he pointed out.

Derek had to concede that one. After Spencer had been introduced to the team and then invited to come, they had immediately gone back to Derek's apartment to pack a go bag, then driven straight to Loring. Aside from the briefing and the few minutes in the office before that, the team hadn't seen Derek since he left work three days earlier to catch the first plane to Chicago. "When you take a study break, we'll fix that."

"But Hotch  _said_ –."

"I'll be right back," Derek cut him off, snapping a bit more than he meant to. "You just sit here and start reading."

Reluctantly, Spencer opened a book. Derek lingered as Spencer's eyes flickered back and forth between the pages and his brother, but after a few seconds Spencer was completely absorbed in the text, his skinny finger trailing down the page as he read at inhuman rates.

Truthfully, Derek was grateful to get a second away from everything as he slipped out of the room. He felt his anger bristle down his back as he passed the bigoted cop on front desk duty. He reflexively touched his gun. A profiler might say it was to reinforce he was protected, or maybe to remind himself that he was the alpha, the superior male. He supposed the answer could have been either one. Derek usually wore his bravado - and his caring heart - on his sleeve as plainly as his FBI badge. Except he currently felt devoid of all three... a real man wouldn't be cowering behind his job instead of stepping up and taking true responsibility for his family, yet he wasn't sure he was capable of doing any more than he currently was. Drained couldn't even begin to touch how he was feeling.

And he knew the worst was yet to come.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warnings for the use of the r-word, self injurious behavior, and lots and lots of feelings.

Penelope Garcia's fingers loomed over her keyboard. She had been resisting the urge to look up Francine Morgan's obituary online for the past hour. She hated looking into her friend's personal lives – it gave her the creeps – but she hated being out of touch with Morgan even more. Her dark office combined with the fluorescent glow of her computer screens usually comforted her but today it was causing her nothing but anxiety. She got up from her chair and began to pace. Again.

"Get ahold of yourself woman," she said. "He'll call you when he needs you."

As if on cue her phone rang. Garcia froze in surprise, then scrambled to put on her headset.

"Hello?" she answered, panicked.

There was a pause on the line. "Garcia?"

"Morgan!" she shouted, relief evident in her voice. "Morgan, my hot dark chocolate love mocha. I've been waiting for you to call."

Derek laughed. "Hot dark chocolate love mocha?" he repeated.

"Cut me some slack, I've been worried sick for days. I missed you," she smiled.

"When we get back I'll take you on a proper date and you can call me all the names you want," he teased suggestively.

"What makes you think that you're the one I want to see?" Garcia asked. She sat back down at her computer and adjusted her hot pink glasses, having knocked them off balance rushing to put her headset on. With one keystroke she brought up a picture of Spencer Morgan. After trying to resist looking up any information on the Morgan family for three days, she had finally conceded to looking up a picture of Spencer that morning after the briefing. She had already seen him in person, so she figured a picture wasn't much of a pry.

"Don't worry, you'll have plenty of time to get to know Spencer," Derek said. She could almost detect a hint of… something in his voice.

"How are  _you_  doing sweet cheeks?"

Derek sighed. "You know I would tell you all about it, but I'm calling for the case baby girl."

"You wouldn't tell me all about it, but go for the office of supreme knowledge on all things evil and creepy anyways," she said.

Garcia could hear him laugh and she was glad he hadn't gotten offended at her quip. "We need all the information you can give us on werewolves, specifically if there are any folktales or legends about their mating or pack behaviors."

"Give me twenty minutes and it will be in your inboxes. Give me twenty-five and it can include screen shots of Taylor Lautner."

"Come on, Garcia, you know I don't like hearing about your other boyfriends," Morgan teased.

"Don't worry Morgan, you're the only man in my life. Werewolf human hybrids don't count." She heard him laugh and thank her, then he hung up the line. Garcia cracked her fingers, eager to get to work, eager to have something to do to occupy her thoughts away from the heartbreak of her best friend.

The pictures of Spencer was still on her main computer screen. "You're my baby now, too. Just wait till I get ahold of you," she said, smiling at the picture. Then she snapped up and shook her head. "That sounded way too unsubby," she muttered to herself, before diving into her work.

At the Loring PD, Derek snapped his phone closed. "Garcia's gonna e-mail in twenty," he told the team. He garnered a few nods of acknowledgement but nobody looked away from what they were doing. Derek joined JJ at the white board. The four victims’ bite marks were well represented on the board. The ME had said that normal human teeth couldn't have made the bite marks. The unsub must have filed his teeth into points. He would have assumed it was an animal bite if the saliva hadn't been from a human. There were large pieces of flesh missing, mostly from the legs.

"How are you doing?" JJ whispered to him.

Derek could only shrug and look over at his brother, busy reading. "Truthfully? It feels good to be thinking about anything other than…"

JJ nodded as Derek faded off, not able to bring himself to put into words how his world had exploded around him. It seemed like he could hardly get the word "mom" out without crying. "Even if the 'other thing' is a serial killer?" JJ teased lightly, hoping he wouldn't take it the wrong way.

"I'm avoiding dealing with death by immersing myself in death," Derek said. He shook his head at his own behavior. "Profile away."

JJ smiled softly. "When my sister died, I spent weeks on the soccer field. I wouldn't talk to anyone. I just kept kicking that ball like the world would end if I stopped. My mom didn't understand, but my dad did. He knew I needed to do something that I was good at, that I could feel in control of."

"So catching killers is my coping mechanism? You think I'm using this case, these victims, to deal with my own problems?" Derek asked, a hint of anger in his voice. He had always prided himself on being able to see the unsub as a human being, no matter how inhuman the unsub seemed to be – or how inhumanely he treated his victims. He didn't appreciate the insinuation that he was using senseless murder or the murderer for his own gain.

"I'm not profiling you," JJ said firmly. She sighed and braved a hand on his shoulder. She felt him tense under her touch and she recoiled. "I'm saying… I understand what it means to lose someone. I've been there."

"Thanks," Derek murmured. He wanted to mean it, but there was no emotion behind the words.

They stood in awkward silence for a few minutes. Both pretended to study the whiteboard, neither of them really taking anything in.

"There's one thing I don't get," Emily stated from a desk somewhere behind them. Both Derek and JJ turned to face her, glad that someone broke the silence between them. "The bite marks are messy and animalistic but hardly removed any flesh. The knife wounds-," Emily pointed to the 'fillet cuts' on the legs as the ME had so eloquently put it in his report, "these are practiced, sure, and purposeful. The bite marks look like an animal driven on instinct and pure emotion. The knife wounds suggest planning, forethought."

"The unsub relied on weapons for the first two murders but the third and fourth were beatings. There was no need to bring a knife to the last two killings," Derek said, picking up where she left off. "He plans the timing down to the minute, is detailed enough to be able to pull off the murders at all different times of the day without getting caught, and brings a knife, knowing that he will need to remove the flesh. But in the moment he brutally beats his victims and bites their flesh. Its inconsistent."

"Aren't werewolves human most of the time and transform only on a full moon?" JJ asked, then smiled self-consciously. "Not that I believe in werewolves. But maybe our unsub believes he is human before and after the attacks and takes on a wolf mentality during the actual killing. I'm not exactly a werewolf authority, though." Most of the team shrugged – there was a reason why they had called Garcia for research help.

Derek looked over at Spencer who was dutifully working on the tablet in his "office." Every few seconds he would pause to jot down something in his notebook. "We've got a werewolf authority," Derek realized. "I told Spencer to start researching werewolves an hour ago."

"And he's already an expert?" Emily asked skeptically.

"I'd be surprised if there's something he  _doesn't_ know by now," Derek said defensively. He walked over to the conference room.

Spencer was swiping his finger across the screen every few seconds, reading at a mind-numbing speed, the fact that he was pausing to write in his notebook making it even more impressive. “Hey kid,” Derek said, to no response from Spencer. Derek rubbed his face – his brother was “in the zone” again. But this time he had no time or patience for it. “Spencer,” he said again, lightly shaking Spencer’s shoulder.

He practically flew out of his chair in surprise, the wheeled office chair pushing back from the table a foot or two. Spencer dug the heels of his hands forcefully into the tops of his thighs.

"We need your help," Derek said, hoping if he dove right in he could side step Spencer’s… Spencer-ness. “Did you study werewolves?"

"Did you study werewolves?" Spencer repeated, clearly annoyed. "I studied lycanthropy."

"What do you know about lycanthropy?" Derek asked, assuming that lycanthropy was some psychology term for werewolf.

Spencer opened his mouth to answer but then clamped it shut tightly as Derek heard the door squeak open behind him. He turned from his brother expecting to see a member of his team. Instead, he saw the officer that had been so rude at the front desk standing in the doorway. He cleared his throat, clearly expecting some kind of action out of Derek. There was an awkward moment of silence as the officer glared expectantly at Derek, then at Spencer.

"Can I help you?" Derek finally asked.

"Can I help you?" Spencer repeated, to Derek’s chagrin.

"I need the conference room," the officer said, tucking his thumbs into his belt, his bulging belly rolling over his hands.

"We were given permission-" Derek started.

"I know, but that don't change the fact that I need the room," the officer interrupted. "The mayor wants an update. This is the room we always use." His words weren't exactly confrontational, but his posture and the mixed look of superiority and prejudice smirked across his face… it put Derek on edge. And judging from Spencer's behavior, even he had picked up on the non-verbals. He was lightly scratching the back of his hand, leaving little white and red nail marks on his pale skin.

"Can you find another place?" Derek suggested coolly. He drew up to his full height and stepped firmly between the officer and Spencer in a vain attempt to shield Spencer from the man's affront but there was no amount of shielding that could make Spencer forget what the cop had called him earlier or calm him from the anxiety he was feeling. Derek tried to get a little clarity and distance from the boiling emotions he was trying desperately to suppress. He had thought Hotch's invitation to Loring was a blessing but now he was hard pressed to remember why. The Morgan boys – Derek using cannibalism as therapy, Spencer so anxious that he was starting to draw blood with his fingernails.

The officer didn't seem phased by Derek's posturing. In fact, he was smirking at the attempt. "This is the con-ference room," he said, drawing out each syllable. "This is where we con-ference. Or are you stupid like your brother?"

Derek was inches away from losing his temper, the only thing holding him back was Hotch's words,  _we're going to have to work closely with the locals_ and the pictures of the eviscerated women on the white board _._  He swallowed hard, trying to gain control over the emotions that were threatening to overthrow any good judgment he had left.

"Maybe I wasn't clear," the officer said, taking Derek's silence as an offence. "This isn't just the room we always use. This is the only one we got. We don't have all the fancy resources of Quan-ti-co here in Loring."

"Come on, man, your police chief gave us this room-," Derek started, finding his voice.

"For your retard, I know," the officer cut off, raising his voice. "And now I'm saying get your stuff and move."

"That will be enough."

The officer turned around to come face to face with Hotch.

"We are here at the request of your sheriff to help you solve this case. Please don't misunderstand me when I say that we will do all we can to assist you. But you will not disrespect my team in the process. And you will not call that young man a retard ever again."

The officer untucked his thumbs from his belt and drew up to his full height to face Hotch. "Is that so?" he asked. Spencer let out a small whimper.

Without hesitation, Hotch answered. "Yes. It is."

The officer stood his ground for few long seconds. "Any fall out with the mayor ’s on you," he warned before leaving.

Derek let out a breath he hadn't realized he had been holding in. He turned back to his brother and took note of his hands and forearms. Spencer was still raking his fingernails over angry scratches that were now drawing blood. "Damn," he muttered.

"There's a first aid kit up front. I'll get it. You stay here," Hotch offered, though with the intensity that was still in his eyes from the confrontation it might as well have been an order.

"No, I can do it," Derek said quickly, moving toward the doorway where Hotch still stood. Spencer reached out a hand for Derek's sleeve but his fingers missed. He brought his bloody arm down to hit his leg in one sweeping motion.

"Derek," Hotch said, warned, quietly. "Stay with him. I'll get it." If Hotch was taken aback by the self injurious behavior, he didn't show it.

Derek came face to face with Hotch, occupying the same space that the officer had only moments before. Derek drew in a breath, ready to argue, to shout, to explode. But the breath caught in his throat and in an instant he realized he didn't even have any words to say. He wished he could blame Hotch for something,  _anything_. He wished had a reason to explode. He wished he could have an outburst like Spencer and have someone patiently comfort him.

Then he realized. He did have that.

Derek's eyes met Hotch's. Usually so full of intensity and often full of anger, they now held nothing but care and concern. "I'll get the first aid kit," Hotch said again gently.

Derek could only nod and it was then that he realized that the police station was completely still. His team, the officers, the detectives, the sheriff – they were all standing silently, watching the scene unfold. Spencer, thankfully, was still as unaware as Derek had been moments earlier.

"Are you okay?" Derek asked Spencer quietly. For the first time all day, Spencer was really crying, a steady stream of silent tears fell down his cheeks. It broke something deep inside of Derek and he fought hard to keep his emotions locked down tight. He knelt down next to Spencer’s chair. Despite being shorter than Spencer at that angle, the kid managed to tuck himself under Derek’s arms anyways.

"Are you okay?" Spencer asked. "Are you okay?"

It took Derek a second to realize that the repeated phrase was actually Spencer asking him. "I'm okay," Derek whispered, not daring to speak out loud in fear that his emotions would betray him. “I’m sorry, kid.” _For everything_ , he wanted to add.

“I’m sorry,” Spencer said back, clearly holding back a few extra words of his own.

Moments later Hotch returned with the first aid kit. He set it down in front of Spencer and pulled out a few band-aids as Derek moved away from the two. Wordlessly he held out his hand and Spencer immediately held out his arm in return. He didn't flinch as Hotch pressed down around his small, self-inflicted cuts. A feeling of relief rushed over Derek, and with that, an overwhelming sleepiness. He hadn't realized how much the pressure of caring for Spencer had been weighing on him until Hotch had taken over.

"In Japan when one person helps another person, its customary to say 'sumimasen' instead of 'arigatou.' Its typically translated, 'excuse me,' but when used in the place of 'arigatou,' it means something like ‘I’m sorry you were inconvenienced by me,'" Spencer said quietly.

Hotch gently put on the last band-aid and smiled. "We’re a team," he said simply.

Spencer smiled, obviously somewhat embarrassed. "Derek…" he asked, turning toward his brother.

"Yeah, kid?"

"I want to call mom now."

Derek’s heart plunged even further into his stomach. Hotch looked at Derek, silently asking if Derek wanted him to take over. They were both so used to talking down an unsub in the heat of emotional situations, Derek was sure Hotch had already formulated an approach to get Spencer off the topic of his mom.

Not only off the topic, Derek realized, but out of the police station. The entire station was still silent and unmoving, all eyes either fixed on the conference room or awkwardly on the floor. There was a serial killer somewhere out there  _eating the flesh of women._  Derek felt sick that he had drawn attention away from that. How much farther would the team be to solving the case had they not come? He wasn't in any position to help, and how had he even considered that Spencer could help? His brother couldn't even undo his seatbelt to get out of the car to throw up. God, he was so tired.

Spencer still stared at him awkwardly. Derek slowly nodded to Hotch to take over.

"Spencer," Hotch addressed calmly, getting the young man's attention. "We can't call right now because we're in the police station and we don't want anyone at home to get worried, so how about JJ takes you and Derek to a hotel now?"

Derek nodded in support of the plan as much as it killed him and Spencer didn't object, which was all the approval that Derek needed from him. Hotch motioned for JJ to come over. The team wouldn't be needing a media specialist anytime soon. JJ, equal parts professionalism and compassion, came over and offered Derek a small smile, hoping all was well between them. Derek couldn't bring himself to meet her eyes.

"Drive them to the hotel. Make sure they get something to eat," Hotch instructed. Derek felt his cheeks burn a bit at the insinuation that he would forget to eat dinner until he realized that, honestly, he probably would have. And, in turn, Spencer would have too.

"The case is solved?" Spencer piped up. "Was it a case of lycanthropy?"

"Lycanthropy?" Hotch asked.

"Lycanthropy. The delusion of believing you're a werewolf," Spencer answered. "The DSM-II and III classified it as a drug induced delusion, however subsequent studies-."

"Not now, kid," Derek interrupted quietly.

Spencer's brow furrowed, trying to figure out his brother. "I'm on the case, right? Why can't we talk about it?"

"We're done for the day," Derek said, though in reality they were probably done for good. "We'll get some dinner, then we're going to a hotel."

Spencer nodded his approval of the plan. "And then we're going to call mom."

Derek sighed, but Spencer smiled.

"Don't worry," Spencer said. "I won't tell her there’s a werewolf on the loose."


	6. Chapter 6

The contents of Derek and Spencer's go bags were strewn around the hotel room. When Derek was on a case, he tried to make a point of staying tidy and organized. More often than not they got called in the middle of the night, and on rare cases where they were able to wake up at a decent time it still never felt like enough sleep. Toothbrush already loaded with toothpaste, shoes untied by the door, key card already in his pants pocket – little time savers that went a long way.

Spencer wasn't happy about the state of the room either, but Derek had persuaded him to worry more about eating his dinner and less about the way the corners of the bed sheets weren't tucked in at perfect angles. Besides, there was clearly something else bothering Spencer. Between bites of hamburger his mouth was clenched tight, making it almost comical to watch him try to chew. Derek finished his food quickly then started getting the items they would need to get Spencer into bed. Sarah had done the nighttime routine Monday and Tuesday and Spencer was so tired from traveling on Wednesday that Derek had practically carried him into his apartment that night. It was hard to believe today was only Thursday. He opened up the spiral bound notebook that Sarah had thoughtfully jotted down notes about Spencer in.

He could only laugh at the first point. "Establish a routine, try to make it as close to the one he already has as possible," he read aloud. He snuck a peak at Spencer; he wasn't paying any attention. "I wonder if mom had a routine established for how you could help catch an unsub. I wonder what she thinks of me intentionally bringing you to a small town with a delusional psychopath."

Derek sighed and tossed the notebook on the table, causing Spencer to jump.

"Sorry kid," Derek said, trying to resist the urge to ruffle his hair. "What’s with the bad lips?" When Spencer didn't move to respond, Derek motioned toward his messenger bag slung behind his chair.

Spencer turned and grabbed his speech book, opening it to a blank page. Derek tossed him a pen. Whatever he was thinking, he was obviously upset by it. His writing was slow and deliberate, nothing like the chicken scratch that had filled up his "FBI record" as Spencer had dubbed it. Derek tried to keep himself from looking his direction. Even though he knew the words he was writing weren't private – Spencer would be reading them to him as soon as he was done – it still felt like an invasion of privacy to watch. Derek remembered once when he had fractured his collarbone playing football. His mom had wanted to help him do  _everything_ , shower, change his clothes, brush his teeth. Derek had flatly refused any help and he remembered being furious when he found out that she had spied on him during his first painful shower. She had sarcastically apologized for wounding his pride. Maybe that was why Derek didn't want to watch Spencer write in his book. He was proud of how his brother worked so hard to overcome his issues, but he knew Spencer felt nothing but embarrassment and anxiety over them.

Not that Spencer cared at all about Derek's inner conflict as he brought his fist to his leg. Derek snapped out of his thoughts and grabbed his brother's arm. "Don't hit yourself," he said sternly.

Spencer struggled against Derek's strong grip, his lips tightly pursed, eyes screwed shut. There was some strong emotion in him he didn't have the words for, he had never felt it before. He didn't know how to describe it, but it was horrible. It was keeping him from thinking straight, he hated when he couldn't think straight. He squirmed under his brother's control.

Derek finally looked at the speech book. "I want to go home to mom now," he read aloud.

Spencer felt Derek's hands let go and he immediately hit his legs as hard as he could. It did nothing to alleviate the emotions he felt inside so he tried again, and again. Nothing. Derek watched helplessly as his brother hit himself. He suddenly didn't have the fight in him to hold his brother down. He wasn't sure he even had the energy to tell Spencer to stop again. Tears sprang into his eyes yet again and he tried to blink them away so Spencer wouldn't see. If he could just get one night's sleep, one good night, he knew he could get through The Conversation. But the thought of telling Spencer now… he just couldn't.

Slowly, Spencer opened his eyes and saw as Derek settled back in the chair across from him, his fingers pinching the corners of his eyes, a move, Spencer had learned, that meant that someone was trying to keep from crying.

"I'm sorry," Spencer said.

"Why are you sorry?" Derek asked.

"Why are you sorry? Because you always get upset when I hurt myself," Spencer answered. He subconsciously fingered the band aids on his forearm, making him look younger than he was.

Derek sighed. "No, I don't," he objected, then rolled his eyes at himself at even trying to attempt such an obvious lie. "Okay I do. I don't like it when my little brother hurts himself. That's allowed right?"

Spencer nodded thoughtfully. "I would say I wouldn't do it again, but that would be a lie."

Derek had to laugh at Spencer's honesty. "Remember what I told you about my job? Profilers don't just look at the crime, they look at the motivation of the unsub to commit that crime." Spencer nodded. "So we don't need to talk about what you did, we need to talk about why you did it. What made you hurt yourself?"

"What made you hurt yourself?" Spencer repeated several times. Derek nodded toward the speech book and Spencer grabbed it. He swallowed hard before reading. "I want to go home to mom now."

Derek had already read the words aloud, but the words still hit him hard. "You need to stay with me for now," Derek said quietly, his voice thick with the tears that he was swallowing back.

"But it hurts!" Spencer suddenly exploded. He grabbed Derek’s hand forcefully and put it over his skinny chest, making Derek practically fall out of his chair. "Here! You have to make it stop!"

"Make what stop?" Derek asked, noticing how Spencer was trembling. Spencer's fingers dug into Derek's hand as Derek tried to maneuver himself from an awkward lunge to a kneeling position.

"I'm having a heart attack!" Spencer panicked. "It hurts!"

Derek tried to remain calm despite the bitter taste of adrenaline in his mouth, despite his own wildly beating heart, despite the thick knot that had developed in his throat, despite the fact that Spencer's fingernails were digging into his skin. "I don't understand kid," Derek said desperately. "What’s the… what’s the logical explanation?" Maybe if he could switch Spencer into academic mode he could get an answer out of him.

"Logical explanation? My chest hurts, I feel dizzy, I want to cry."

"Are those symptoms of a heart attack?" Derek asked.

As suddenly as Spencer had grabbed Derek, he let go. "Are those symptoms of a heart attack? No. Not entirely. Not the crying. Crying is a secretomotor phenomenon unrelated to pain in the optic nerve or ocular membrane and certainly not related to the cardiovascular system."

Derek put both hands on the arm of the chair and let his head rest on them for a second, trying in vain to clear his head. "Then what is the illogical explanation for chest pains?" he asked, looking back up at Spencer.

He thought for a second. "It could be psychosomatic. Or emotional."

"Lets go with emotional," Derek smirked. "What emotions give you chest pains and make you cry?" Spencer looked at Derek blankly. Derek grabbed the speech book and tapped the sentence on the page. "Know what I think? I think its homesickness."

"Its not physically possible for the heart muscle to ache or feel," Spencer objected.

"I don't know how it works," Derek said, "but it does. Its how I feel whenever I think of you, or Sarah or Desiree."

"Or mom."

Derek nodded slowly. If only it was just homesickness for mom. If only that was all that had been knotted in his stomach for days, threatening to overtake his whole body at any moment. His brother looked into his eyes awaiting an answer and Derek knew he couldn't put the truth off any longer. At first Derek had managed to convince himself he was protecting Spencer, but it was becoming obvious to him that he was really protecting himself. Spencer needed to know the truth.

"Come over here, kid," Derek said, walking to the bed and sitting at the head of the bed, leaning against the headboard. Spencer frowned and followed, but paused to pull out the corners of the top sheet and re-tuck them in neatly. Then he pulled his shoes off and neatly placed them at the foot of the bed. Slowly and awkwardly he got on the foot of the bed and crawled the length of it to sit next to Derek.

"I have something I have to tell you," Derek said. "Its okay if you don't want to talk back, you can just listen, but you need to pay attention." Spencer nodded in understanding. Derek took a deep breath. "Your sisters and I… we haven't been totally honest with you."

Spencer's brow furrowed.

"You're not staying with me for a week, you're going to be living with me for a while."

"But I live with mom," Spencer objected.

Derek shook his head. He opened his mouth to speak but nothing came out. Before he could stop himself he was crying. "I'm sorry, Spencer," he choked out. "I'm so sorry, man." He tried to take a deep breath, but it came in and out in raspy, broken spurts. Maybe there was a way he could keep the truth from Spencer forever, maybe there was some elaborate ruse they could all pull off. There had to be a way to keep Spencer from getting hurt. For as long as Derek could remember the Morgan family had done all they could to help Spencer move forward in life, to pull him as far as possible away from the traumatized, broken child who had shown up at the gas station at 9 years old. It seemed like a horrific injustice to make Spencer have to suffer any more.

"I'm so sorry," Derek whispered again.

"I live with mom," Spencer repeated his objection, his voice rising in pitch, in panic. "All my stuff is at home. Mom is at home. I live at home."

"No, that's… that's what I'm trying to tell you. Mom…" Derek faded off and took another deep breath, this one doing a better job at calming his emotions, even if just for a second. He looked into Spencer's wide, scared eyes. Spencer immediately looked away.

It was now or never.

"Spencer, mom… she passed away on Monday."

For a moment, it seemed as if time stopped. Spencer stared at the blanket, his eyes wide, then he looked over at Derek. "Was it the werewolves? Another victim might change the profile. Does the team know?"

Derek blinked in surprise. "No, kid, it… it has nothing to do with werewolves. She was… she was hit by a car," he sputtered out.

"In urban legends, werewolf attacks are often blamed on other creatures. Admittedly, usually other mythical creatures or plain wolves are singled out, but I don't think we can rule out vehicles."

Spencer sprung out of bed and put on his shoes. "We have to tell the team," he announced.

"Spencer – stop," Derek said, standing up and coming around to Spencer. "You need to stop."

"Stop what? Isn't that why you brought me? To help you at the FBI?"

Derek was at a complete loss. Of all the scenarios he had played out in his head, he had never considered this one. His brother, usually maddeningly literal and logical, was now having a delusional break from reality right in front of him. "What did I just tell you?" Derek asked in an attempt to get Spencer back to reality.

"What did I just tell you?" Spencer repeated. "'Spencer mom she passed away on Monday. No kid it it has nothing to do with werewolves. She was she was hit by a car. Spencer stop, you need to stop.'" Spencer stooped down to tie his shoe. "I have an eidectic memory," he said, as if Derek needed a reminder.

"You gotta listen to me," Derek pleaded. "Actually listen to what I'm trying to tell you."

"I did listen," Spencer argued. "Spencer mom she passed away on Monday. No kid it it has nothing to-."

Derek grabbed his brother's shoulders and shook him. "Stop it!" he shouted. "Stop it and listen!"

"Stop it and listen!" Spencer shouted back. "Stop it and listen! Spencer mom she passed away on Monday…"

Derek let the tears fall freely, unchecked, as Spencer repeated the words again. It was as if someone was narrating his own private hell. He held a tight grip on Spencer's shoulders as if by sheer willpower he could shake his brother into understanding. Spencer finished repeating Derek's word and stared, shocked, at his brother. He couldn't remember a time that Derek had ever yelled at him, much less laid a hand on him. The feeling in his chest was expanding to his lungs. It was getting harder and harder to breathe…

As Spencer stilled, Derek suddenly became aware of what he had done. "I… I'm sorry," Derek whispered, slowly letting go. "I didn't mean to… I'm sorry."

But Spencer couldn't nod, and he certainly couldn't find the words to express how he was feeling. All he could think about was the fact that he hadn't had a full breath in over two minutes and humans require oxygen to avoid asphyxiation…

Suddenly, Derek found himself grabbing for Spencer as his brother fainted.


	7. Chapter 7

At 16, Derek had been long used to the steady stream of foster kids his mom had coming in and out of the house. Most were kids taken by CPS from their parents. They were just making a pit stop at the Morgan home before heading off to a grandparent or aunt's house. Some stayed for a few weeks until their parents could get their acts together. Some lived at the Morgan house for months, usually kids that grew up in the system. Fran had loved each of them but she was always clear with social workers that even though she loved being mom to kids from all across the city, the only way to do right by her three biological children was to keep the official Morgan count to four: Fran, Sarah, Derek, and Desiree.

Until Spencer showed up at a gas station and the Morgan family was irrevocably changed.

A sharp knock on the door snapped an almost sleeping Derek back to attention. His first thought was to grab his gun but he quickly dismissed that idea. For a second he thought he might have dreamed the knock until it came again. Derek pulled his exhausted body out of bed and drug himself to the door. Through the peephole lens he could see JJ's distorted face. Derek had hoped she would stop by. She had driven them to the hotel and then gone out to get them food and Derek had barely uttered an audible "thank you" for her help as she dropped off the burgers and left again. He wasn't even sure why he had practically ignored her, maybe an attempt to avert pity or save his pride, maybe because he had been annoyed at her profiling earlier. His behavior seemed so childish in hindsight.

Derek unlatched the door and opened it. She gave him a soft smile. "If this is a bad time, I can come back…"

"No, come in," Derek said, holding the door open for her. "About before, I shouldn't have…"

She shook her head. "I shouldn't have said anything, especially in the middle of the police station."

"Call it good?" Derek offered.

JJ smiled. "Yeah," she said. She took stock of the room. The trash from dinner was still sitting on the table. One of the Morgan brothers hadn't finished their meal but JJ wasn't about to inquire which one it was. Spencer was laying in bed. He looked so skinny laid out, and so young. "He must have been exhausted after everything that happened today," she commented quietly.

Derek sighed. "Not exactly." He motioned for her to sit at the table with him. "I told him what happened and he didn't take it well."

"What happened?" JJ asked. She immediately regretted the question. She knew Derek hated talking about anything personal and it hadn't exactly gone well the last time she had asked.

She could almost see the thoughts working in his head, his desire to keep his private life private and his need to talk, his need for help in shouldering his burden. "I told him," Derek said slowly, "and he had some kinda break with reality, then fainted."

JJ's eyes widened in surprise. "Should we get him to a hospital?" she asked.

"He used to faint a lot as a kid, its nothing new. But its been a while. I think." Derek shook his head. “Honestly, I don’t know. Once I joined the Bureau, I didn’t make it a priority to spend a lotta time in Chicago.”

“Hey,” she chastised softly. “Anyone who knows you knows your family is your top priority. Just because you didn’t see them in person as often as you wanted doesn’t change that.”

Derek swallowed thickly. “I can’t help thinking, if I had been there a little more often… maybe I’d be doing a better job with Spencer.”

“Seems like you’re doing a pretty good job from what I’ve seen.”

Derek thought back to his hands gripping Spencer’s skinny arms and didn’t respond.

"When he wakes up…" she trailed off, not sure how to finish. She didn't want to make any wrong assumptions about Spencer's mental ability.

"Will he remember?" Derek supplied for her. "Honestly, I don't know. He's got this genius memory, remembers  _everything._  Every damn word I say," Derek said, the bitterness of having his mom's death recounted over and over again still fresh in the pit of his stomach.

"Hopefully he'll remember," she said lamely. JJ rolled her eyes at herself and sat back in the chair, her back hitting the cheap hotel chair with a thud, all pretenses of being calm and collected flying out the window. "I'm sorry Derek, god I'm so sorry," she said. "I'm surrounded by death every day. I specialize in telling parents that their child has been brutally murdered. And every day I think, 'I wish there was something I could do to change this.' Not just help catch the unsub but  _really_  change it, make the pain go away. But I've never wished for it more than I do for you and Spencer. I hope you know that if there's anything you need, me and the team, we'll do it."

Derek couldn't look at her, he could only nod and swallow thickly, but there wasn't anything that needed to be said anyways. The rhythmic sounds of Spencer's breathing lulled them into a comfortable silence. For Derek, the sight of his brother was the only thing tethering him to reality. If he closed his eyes, he could almost pretend that the breaths belonged to someone else. How many times had he fallen asleep with Hotch or Gideon in the same hotel room, each of them with their cell phones next to their heads, shoes practically on their feet, ready to go back to some police station at a moments notice? He could almost pretend that none of this had happened. His mom would have probably been getting Spencer ready for bed, going through their well practiced nighttime routine – one that Derek had all but thrown out the window. Then again, how could Derek know what his mom would be doing? It wasn't like he was home every night once he got his football scholarship.

"What is it?" JJ asked gently.

Derek realized he must have quite the expression on his face from all the emotions and thoughts running through his head. He looked over at Spencer. "I swear the kid doesn't age," he said. "He looks as innocent and unassuming as the first time I saw him." He grabbed the speech book off of the table and opened up the front cover. His heart burned at the familiar handwriting beautifully printed inside. " _Spencer's Eleventh Speech Book. Here's to empty pages staying empty. Love, Mom_ ," he read aloud.

"Eleven?"

"Guess so. When he gets upset he… destroys stuff. Or himself." Derek put the book on the table again. "I thought he was on book seven, eight maybe. Shows you how much I visited. Mom worked so hard to get him to talk. If he could public speak… man, she knew the world would be his."

Derek was interrupted by the sound of a cell phone vibrating. Both agents instinctively reached for their pockets, but JJ stopped herself from grabbing hers. She watched as Derek looked at the name on the caller ID, his jaw working slightly, his finger hovering between the "accept" and "decline" buttons. "It's Sarah," he told her, as if that explained why he wasn't answering. When the phone stopped vibrating, JJ couldn't tell if Derek was relieved or disappointed that he had missed the call. Either way, he tossed the phone on the table next to the speech book and the food wrappers.

Had JJ not had her eyes on Spencer, neither would have noticed when his skinny hand gripped the blanket. "Derek," JJ said quietly, urgently. "I think he’s waking up."

Slowly Derek approached his brother's bedside and crouched down beside him so that his head was level with Spencer's. He couldn't help but smile as Spencer slowly opened one eye and then the other. "Hey," Derek said quietly. "You feeling okay?"

Spencer thought for a moment then slowly nodded. He watched Derek's face change. A smile, then his eyebrows furrowed, and his lips pursed. Spencer tried to place the expression… anger? Frustration? His stomach knotted at the thought of those emotions being directed towards him.

Spencer felt his brother's large hand prying open his fingers. "Spencer, relax," Derek said as he tried to keep Spencer from making such a tight fist that he was drawing blood with his fingernails. He wished he knew what to say to make his brother stop hurting himself. Even if he hadn't visited home regularly after leaving for college, he knew that the frequency of Spencer's self-injurious behavior had increased since he had taken responsibility for his care. Spencer relaxed a little under his brother's grip. "Spencer, I wanted to tell you…" Derek faded, painfully aware that JJ was in the room and that he hadn't exactly disclosed the full story of why Spencer had fainted. "I'm sorry I hurt you. Can you forgive me?"

Spencer nodded slowly.

Derek hated to ask and the words made him nauseous, but he had to be sure. "Kid, do you remember what I told you before you fainted?"

Spencer took a moment to process the question, then he seemed to need another moment to find the words. "Do you remember what I told you before you fainted?" he repeated without any emotion. "Yes. Mom is dead."

Derek had to quickly school his facial expression. All facts with Spencer, as if he were reciting one of the millions of trivia facts in his head. As tears threatened for the hundreth time that day, Derek wondered which brother had it better.

The two brothers stared at each other for a few more seconds until Spencer broke the silence. “I want to go to sleep," Spencer said. "Is it 9:30 yet?"

Spencer was referring to his routine. Derek glanced at his watch - 7:45pm. He looked a Spencer whose eyelids were already drooping again, and then at JJ, who could only shrug her agreement to the white lie. "Almost," Derek told his brother. "Lets get you ready for bed, then it'll be time."

"It takes me 14 minutes to get ready for bed."

"Then its 9:16," Derek told him. What was one more lie on top of what he had already done wrong?

That got Spencer's eyes back open. JJ couldn't help but smile as Spencer stumbled out of bed, reminding her of a newborn fawn on his tall lanky legs. He was probably still a little lightheaded from fainting. Derek grabbed his brother's shoulders to steady him but Spencer immediately shied away from the touch, jumping back and hitting the back of his leg on the end table.

"Don't touch!" Spencer shouted.

Spencer's back leg was bent awkwardly to accommodate for the end table, his arms were wrapped around his torso. Derek took his outstretched hands and rubbed his face, completely lost.

"Number one, choose pajamas.”

Both boys looked at JJ as she stood up from the table, reading from the spiral bound notebook that Derek had tossed next to her earlier. She stole a look at Derek, silently asking for permission to take over. Like Hotch, she was more than capable of talking down emotional situations. Thankfully, there was nothing but relief and appreciation written across Derek's face.

"Number one, choose pajamas," Spencer repeated slowly, as if his mind was waking up again. "Where are my pajamas?" he asked, a hint of panic in his voice.

"In your suitcase," Derek said quietly, testing the waters with his brother. Spencer's eyes moved around the room until his eyes landed on the black bag. "Can I help you?" he asked. Ignoring the question, Spencer headed for his bag. For more than 10 years, Spencer's pajamas had always been in the same drawer in the same dresser in the same room in the same house. And, Derek realized, for the majority of those nights, the same woman had helped him get ready for bed.

"He always did this with my mom, and if not my mom then my sisters," Derek whispered to her as Spencer unzipped the suitcase.

"Do you think the male presence is making him nervous?" JJ asked, carefully wording the sentence.  _Do you think his brother is making him nervous?_ She could have just as easily asked.

Derek shrugged. "JJ… I wouldn't ask if I had another option…" he said, fading off. He hoped JJ understood he was asking for help.

"I  _want_  you to ask," JJ said. "That's what I was telling you earlier. We're your team, your family. We're here for you if you'll let us be."

Derek looked as tired as he looked overwhelmed. "Thank you," he said quietly, looking her straight in the eyes.

JJ had to blink back tears and broke eye contact before she lost it. Derek Morgan never asked for help, he never let anyone into his personal life, and he never, ever, gave up. The Derek Morgan before her was a broken man.

She cleared her throat and turned toward Spencer. "I'm going to help you get ready for bed, if that's okay with you," she told him.

Spencer nodded. "'Ready for bed' is an English idiom. It's called my bedtime routine. I was already in bed once and I didn't do anything to get ready to be in it the first time," he said. JJ headed toward the motel bathroom armed with PJ's, a toiletries bag, and the spiral bound notebook, and motioned for him to follow. Spencer hesitated for only a second before following her. "English idioms are always illogical. Do you know the origins of many of them are rooted…"

Spencer's monologue faded out as JJ closed the bathroom door behind them. Derek sat down on the bed as he listened to the faucet turn on and off, the sound of a toothbrush get tapped on the edge of the sink, a quickly stifled laugh from JJ, surely at something innocently hilarious that Spencer said. He felt a pang of guilt; it should have been him helping his brother. If only he hadn't shaken Spencer, if only he hadn't taken him by the shoulders in his own anger and grief. How often had he cursed Spencer's birth parents for hurting him? Now Spencer was afraid that Derek would hurt him, too. It seemed like he had lived a year in the last few days. He couldn't even remember what he had done the week before. Watched sports on TV? Gone out with the team for drinks? Slept in his own bed? Everything seemed so trivial now. Except sleep… sleep sounded wonderful…

A little more than 14 minutes later, JJ and Spencer emerged from the bathroom, Spencer all ready for bed. JJ smiled at Derek, sound asleep. Her phone began to vibrate and she plucked it from her pocket. Spencer, still acutely aware that he was still on the case of a werewolf, waited impatiently for her to answer.

"JJ," she answered. It was Hotch. "Okay… okay… that's great… I'll let them know… I'll be there in 20 minutes." She moved to hang up the phone when Hotch's voice caught her attention. "Yeah?... yeah… It was a rough night but they're going to be alright."

She hung up and turned to Spencer. She wanted to hug him so badly, but she knew that would break any fragile bond of trust he had started to build with her. "They caught the unsub," she whispered excitedly. "It was because of you. Your tip about lycanthropy was the key to the profile that led to his capture."

Spencer broke out into a huge grin. "Lycanthropy is the term for a subject's delusion that he or she is a werewolf," he told her, happiness evident in his voice.

"I'm glad we had our genius to tell us that," JJ complimented.

Spencer completely missed the compliment. "I do have three doctorates," he told her.

JJ's eyes widened in disbelief. Spencer wouldn't say it if he didn't at least believe it to be the truth. "Well…" she sputtered out. "We're lucky to have you. We'll celebrate tomorrow. Tonight I've got to go back to the station and finish up some work."

"I have to go to bed after my bedtime routine is done," Spencer told her, as if JJ had invited him to come back to the station too. "Goodnight, JJ."

JJ turned to put her phone in her bag on the table. When she turned back around, she saw that despite there being two queen sized beds, Spencer had crawled in right next to Derek. Within seconds of his head hitting the pillow his eyes were already closed. Derek stirred slightly as Spencer's weight hit the bed next to him and JJ took the small opportunity to crouch down on Derek’s side of the bed.

"Hey," she whispered.

He sleepily opened his eyes, startled to see JJ's face. "Hey," he said, starting to sit up. "Sorry I fell asleep."

"No, don't get up," JJ whispered. "I just wanted to let you know that they caught the unsub. Spence's tip about lycanthropy helped set the profile."

Derek couldn't help but laugh. "Here I thought I brought him here so  _I_  could help the team," he said. "Thanks for telling me."

JJ smiled. "That's not even the best part," she whispered. Derek looked at her confused. She gestured toward Spencer. "Whatever happened earlier… he isn't scared of you. He's sleeping in your bed because he feels safer next to you. He's just used to a woman helping him with his routine."

Derek felt the tears well up yet again and some of the extra weight he had been carrying lift off as he took in a deep breath. "Thanks," he said again.

"Don't mention it," JJ said. "I've got to get back to the station for a briefing. See you tomorrow."

Derek nodded as a beautifully peaceful sleep overtook him before JJ was even out the door.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning - mentions of child abuse

_Mom is dead. Mom is dead. Mom is dead. Mom is dead._

Spencer rested his head on the cool of the window glass as they pulled up to Derek's house. They had stopped by briefly to sleep before their visit to the FBI but now the whole world had changed. The front porch had several boxes waiting for them.

Derek opened his mouth to comment but quickly closed it again. Spencer had been eerily quiet all day; if he didn't comment on it, maybe Spencer wouldn't notice.

But of course, he did. "Your porch looks different."

"Its your stuff," Derek answered. "Logical, right? You're staying with me now."

Spencer nodded, accepting the fact in stride. That morning they had awoken to JJ's knock on their hotel room door. It was exactly 7am, a little too early in Derek's taste, even though the brothers had both been asleep by 10pm. Apparently, JJ had taken some liberty and read the majority of Sarah and Desiree's notebook of instructions.

_Up at 7am — no later._

_Bathroom right away. Seriously Derek. Right away, trust us._

_Breakfast of cereal. He'll eat anything sugary. Mom had been experimenting with a gluten free diet. So good luck with that._

JJ had shown up with a box of rice cereal and her fingers crossed. Derek had seemed genuinely appreciative of her help last night, but she knew better than to think that it would be the same Derek opening the door the next morning. "Help" was not a word typically associated with Derek Morgan. In fact, JJ had noted unhappily, Derek's emotions seemed to have caught up with his actions from the night before. He had seemed embarrassed, uneasy.

"You didn't have to come this morning," he had told her.

"Didn't have to or shouldn't have?" she had asked, already guessing the answer.

Derek had stepped back to allow JJ to come into the hotel room but didn't miss how he held his posture straight, how he didn't meet her eyes, and how little he gave to conversation. It didn't take a profiler to see that Derek was trying to appear as un-broken as possible.

Thankfully they had gotten Spencer up and ready with minimal problems, following the notebook's instructions as rigidly as possible. When JJ left to debrief with the team, Spencer seemed crushed that he couldn't go with her. In truth, he probably could have if not for the fact that the cop who had been so rude the day before was now irate that Spencer had been the one to crack the profile. It was the tiniest ray of sunshine, happy for a second, but then really only served to remind Derek how clouded over his life had become. He and Spencer had packed up and driven home.

Derek got out of the car first and grabbed their bags. "Come on," he told Spencer, motioning for him to follow suit. As they walked into the house, it was strange to think they had only been there yesterday. Yesterday, Spencer had been excited to visit the FBI for the first time, excited to visit his big brother. Today he was walking into his new home.

"You're staying with me now," Spencer whispered, echoing Derek's words, and strangely enough, Derek's thoughts too.

Derek nodded, swallowing thickly. "You're staying with me now."

And for the first time, it seemed real.

Derek set their bags on the ground and turned back around to grab the boxes on the porch. He was hoping they were filled with clothes and knick knacks, things to make Spencer's new room seem a little more familiar.

"No!" Spencer suddenly shouted just before Derek reached the threshold of the door, stopping just short of grabbing Derek's arm and hitting his own leg in the process. One hit, then another and another.

"What?" Derek asked, frustrated. "Are we going to have a meltdown here too?" Spencer stopped hitting himself as suddenly as he had began and blinked at Derek in surprise.

Derek sighed, immediately regretting his tone. "Sorry kid. I'm tired. Show me what you want."

Spencer stared at Derek for another second, then dutifully grabbed his speech book and turned to the most recent page. He handed it to Derek as if Derek was an unfamiliar dog, not sure if Derek was going to lick or bite.

"Mom is dead," Derek read aloud, wanting nothing more than to march out onto the porch despite his brother. Spencer nodded, as if that explained everything. "So why can't I get your stuff from the front porch? Show me something else."

He extended the book back to Spencer, who just shoved it back at him even harder. Spencer's eyes pleaded with him to understand, his lips locked tight. Derek could almost hear a high pitched note coming from Spencer's pursed mouth. It was times like this that Derek could see Spencer's disability as plainly as if he were in a wheelchair. He was trying so hard to communicate, to be understood.

They were two brothers, raised by the most caring, loving woman they could have ever hoped to know, both completely inept at handling their emotions, both completely overwhelmed at the thought of what had suddenly become of their lives.

And maybe, Derek realized, of the two of them maybe Spencer was handling it best. At least he was attempting to communicate, despite his rebelling brain and tongue. At least he was trying to reach out.

Derek took the book to his chest, the open pages shifting as they were pressed into him. He grabbed his brother's outstretched hand and pulled him into a hug. Spencer tensed at the physical touch, then slowly relaxed into it. He wrapped his arms around Derek's body and fisted the material of his shirt tightly. Now closer, he could hear a high pitched hum coming from Spencer. Derek shifted to pull the book out from between them and wrapped that arm around his brother too.

_Mom is dead. Mom is dead. Mom is dead. Mom is dead._

"I'm sorry," Derek whispered fiercely. Spencer showed no signs of wanting to let go of his brother, so Derek kept going, tears spilling out. "I'm sorry I don't know what you want. I'm sorry that Mom is dead. I'm sorry you have to move here. I'm sorry I don't know how to take care of you yet."

Something in his speech caused Spencer to jerk away and look at Derek in surprise. "I'm sorry I don't know how to take care of you yet," he repeated.

"Yeah," Derek said. "I don't know how to keep you from hitting yourself. I don't know what you want half the time."

And then the admission he had been holding in for days — "And I'm sorry I wasn't around enough while you were growing up to know."

But Spencer didn't seem to react to Derek's words at all. "I'm sorry I don't know how to take care of you yet," Spencer repeated again, this time grabbing a new fistful of Derek's shirt and pulling him from the door.

Derek watched Spencer carefully. He wasn't sure what Spencer wanted him to do. "Help me get it, kid."

"I'm sorry I don't know how to take care of you yet," Spencer said again, eyes wide, obviously waiting for Derek's reaction.

Derek sighed, defeated. "I don't know what you want," he admitted. Something about that admission felt good, like a little responsibility was taken off his shoulders. It wasn't as if Spencer was unaware of Derek's inability to understand him. Why did he feel the need to carry on as if he knew what he was doing, living in fear that his every action would cause another meltdown? He had pushed away JJ's help that morning in embarrassment that he couldn't take care of his own brother. He hadn't told the team about his mother before he left to avoid the looks of pity and sympathy. Hell, if he hadn't come back with Spencer he might not have told them at all.

Then suddenly, he knew what his little brother was trying to say to him.

"I'm sorry I don't know how to take care of you yet," Spencer said quietly.

Tears spilled over and ran down his cheeks and he smiled weakly. "We'll figure it out together," he said. The emotions of the moment lingered in the air between them until Derek handed the book back to Spencer and got back to business. "This is the first time I've ever had anyone live with me in this house and this is the first time you've ever moved, so this is new for both of us," Derek said. "First we need to get your boxes from the front porch."

"No."

At least this "no" was a normal volume and without leg hitting. "What’s wrong?" Derek asked, hoping they weren't in for another circular conversation.

"You're wrong," Spencer said. "This isn't the first time I've ever moved."

When Spencer had moved in with the Morgan's at 10 years old, the family made an unspoken pact that they would never ask Spencer about his former life. They would never ask where he had come from or why he had been dropped off at a gas station. They would never do anything that could cause even a second of pain to their new family member. And maybe because they had never asked or maybe because Spencer could have never articulated it to begin with, the Morgan’s knew nothing about his former life.

"You moved in with us," Derek said, treading carefully.

"You moved in with us," Spencer repeated in confirmation. "And before that, six houses, three apartments, two alleys, and 31 hotel rooms."

This time it was Derek's turn to stare at his brother. Spencer didn't seem to realize that he had said anything notable and instead walked away from the conversation into the kitchen.

Derek followed after him, not sure what to say. Spencer had stopped just inside the kitchen, taking it in.

"Are you hungry?" Derek asked.

"Are you hungry? Are you hungry?" Spencer said. "Hunger is defined as a state in which a person, for a sustained period, is unable to eat sufficient food to meet basic nutritional needs."

"You're not gonna cite your sources?" Derek teased.

"Its Wikipedia," Spencer answered. "Hardly worth mentioning."

Derek sputtered out a laugh. "If Wikipedia had been around while I was in high school, I would have sounded a lot smarter."

"If Wikipedia had been around while you were in high school you would have been a genius because you would have figured out how to travel to the future. The world wide web was not even functional until 1993."

"Hey now, I was handing out my AOL e-mail address to the ladies freshman year," Derek teased.

"Mom didn't get us internet until 1998," Spencer said seriously. "And she forbid you from AOL after she found out what a chatroom was."

Derek laughed. "She always thought the internet was out to get us."

"When you have the good life, fight to keep it," Spencer quoted. He scratched himself on the forearm and Derek didn't move to stop him. A heavy quietness settled over them and they stood, staring aimlessly into the kitchen, until Spencer's stomach growled noisily.

"Its not 12:30 yet, are you okay with eating lunch a little early?" Derek asked. If Spencer argued, he wondered how hard it would be to distract him long enough to set the wall clock forward.

Spencer didn't answer, but he didn't put up a fight when Derek grabbed some leftovers from the fridge. And he didn't argue when Derek put the food on the table or when it took Derek five minutes to realize that Spencer wasn't eating only because Derek hadn't supplied him with a fork.

And then Derek watched with surprise as Spencer did his and Derek's dishes, then refolded the dishtowels so that they hung evenly on his oven door, then went back in the entry way.

Derek followed behind, watching to see what Spencer would do. He remembered Spencer's first day at the Morgan's house. CPS had told them that he had made some noises at his previous foster homes, mostly during outbursts. They had all held their breath every time Spencer made a move. Derek had been nervous to even look at Spencer that first night, unsure of how to interact.

Watching Spencer with his bags now seemed eerily familiar.

With one major exception — this time around, Spencer could open his mouth and talk. As he picked up his bag, he heard Spencer mutter something.

Derek stepped a little closer, not wanting to interfere with this unexpected display of independence.

Whatever Spencer was muttering, he was saying it over and over.

Derek moved a little closer. "What is it?" he asked. Something was gnawing at him. Something was a little off.

Spencer scanned the room, still muttering, and then seemed to find what he was looking for. He took his bag down the hallway to the bedroom that Derek had told him yesterday he would be staying in. Yesterday, guest room. Today, Spencer's bedroom.

Derek followed Spencer down the hallway and into the bedroom. Spencer had set his bag down in the corner and crawled behind it, wedging himself in the corner.

He fought the urge to profile, but the body language was all too familiar. It screamed abuse, victim, trauma — Derek shook his head, unwilling to let his mind wander to the unimaginable.

Spencer was scratching his forearms anxiously, still muttering.

Derek hunched over a bit in an effort to look a little less intimidating and slowly approached Spencer. Silently, he sat on the other side of the bag, allowing Spencer to have the safety he was so obviously craving.

"… you little shit. Go to the corner, you little shit. Go to the corner, you little shit. Go to the corner…"

Derek could feel the heaviness ever present in his chest drop to his stomach. His profiling nature kicked into high gear.

Regression the 46 other times he had moved in his life. Regression to the words that must have been repeated to him over and over.

Regression to the nine-year-old who had been dropped off at the gas station 17 years ago.

Morgan took a deep breath and silently prayed to God, to his mom, to whoever was listening, that they would tell him what to do.

He held out his hand to Spencer cautiously and was relieved when Spencer reached out a trembling hand to him. Tears were spilling out of his big eyes, mirroring the fear held in Derek's.

And with the fear, determination. Determination like he had never felt before.

Derek gripped Spencer's hand tightly, with as much love and force as he could, as if he could comfort his brother by sheer will.

Derek had felt more fear, more insecurity, and more anxiety in the last few days than he had in his whole life, but this sense of determination and desperation to make everything okay for his brother — this is what he knew these were the feelings that would stick.

"I'm sorry I don't know how to take care of you yet," Derek whispered fiercely. "But I promise I'm not going to give up until I do."


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're getting dark and twisty!
> 
> Trigger warnings for mentions of child abuse.

"Oh my god, Derek, have you ever heard of answering a cell phone? What do they have to do at the FBI? Send you a tweet? Facebook you? God. I mean, really."

Derek hadn't been sure what to expect when he reluctantly answered Sarah's phone call, but it hadn't been that.

"Its bad enough I haven't seen Spencer for a few days. But to not even know how he's doing? Or how you're doing? I've been trying to call you about plans. We have to make plans, Derek. God."

Holding his cell phone with his shoulder, he used his free hand to pinch the corners of his eyes in a vain attempt to focus. His other hand, of course, still belong to Spencer who was sleeping as peacefully as one could propped up in a corner shielded behind a luggage bag. Derek's arm had long since cramped up and gone numb resting over the luggage but he was afraid to let go of Spencer. What if Spencer didn't let him take his hand again?

"Sarah," Derek whispered, cutting in to his sister's rant. "Sarah, I'm sorry. We've been busy. We just got home."

"What do you mean 'we just got home'?" she asked. "You got home two days ago."

Derek groaned. "Shit," he whispered. "Sarah, just… you're gonna have to trust me on this one. We took a side trip to a little town here in Virginia. Just for one night. We got back yesterday and…" he trailed off, looking at Spencer. "And we fell asleep early and your call woke me up."

"You took him on a side trip? Don't you think moving to fucking Virginia is a trip enough? Bet he was a mess without his schedule."

"He's a mess because I told him Mom is dead," Derek snapped. He could practically hear Sarah recoil on the other side of the line. She didn't say anything for a moment. "Listen, I had to go back to work to meet with my boss and I wanted Spencer to meet my team. And you know what we had to tell Spencer to get him to come with me here in the first place."

"I know," Sarah said quietly, her anger dissipating.

"When I got to work, my boss invited Spencer and I to go on a local case."

Derek held his breath. "A local case?" Sarah repeated slowly. "As in… like a serial killer case?"

When he had decided to take Spencer to Loring he had somehow justified it to himself that it was for Spencer's good. It had made sense at the time. He had told himself that Spencer would enjoy it, and there had been moments where Derek had even thought that maybe this could be their life: two brothers profiling serial killers. That fantasy had ended as quickly as it had started with the confrontation in the police station. Now it seemed as absurd as when Desiree had come up with the plan to lie to Spencer about their mom's death. Tell him he was going on vacation with Derek. It would be fun because if there was one thing Spencer liked it was spontaneity and adventure (ha). And he would be so distracted by his fun new life (ha, again) that he would forget Mom even existed. Or he would call her every once in a while and the nice new family living in the Morgan’s house would tell him she was out running an errand or in the bathroom. Forever. Derek almost laughed. It had honestly seemed like a reasonable plan in the moment.

Grief can trick a person into believing pretty much anything.

"It sounds so stupid now, believe me, I know," Derek admitted. "But at the time, I was going along with our plan and Spencer was so excited. And, believe it or not, he was actually good at profiling. He actually gave us the lead that helped us solve the case."

Sarah snorted a laugh. "I'm sure he'll tell me all about it when he wakes up."

As relieved as Derek was that Sarah wasn't upset about the trip to Loring, he felt that all-too-familiar pit of dread churn in his stomach.

"How did you tell him?" Sarah asked quietly. "How did he take it?"

"It didn't go well," Derek told her. He knew he should probably add that he had gotten physically angry at Spencer, grabbed his shoulders and shaken him, but the words died in his throat. Instead, all he added was, "If I were at work, I would say he's slipped into a disassociated state. The trauma has caused him to regress. He seems lucid at times, the same smart ass brother we know, and other times…"

Derek faded off, swallowing hard. "What?" Sarah asked.

"Yesterday afternoon, he crawled into a corner and started calling himself a 'little shit,'" Derek said, wanting to spit the words out of his mouth. They tasted bitter and hateful and gave him the hollow feeling he always felt when he thought of what Spencer's former family must have been like. "He's been hurting himself non-stop, scratching, hitting. He’s having a hard time talking, he’s obviously emotionally distressed, can’t get the words out right. And I’m… not sure what to do. Its like I breathe wrong around him and he starts clawing himself."

"God," Sarah breathed. "Do you think he's, like, reliving his childhood or something?"

"He might be," Derek said. "At least he's been asleep for at least 14 hours." The implication of that statement hit him. "I can't believe I've been asleep for 14 hours."

"I'm sure you needed it," Sarah said. "Look, Derek, I know you're just trying your best. About the funeral, Desiree wants to set it for Saturday, which I know is a little earlier than we thought. The more we talked about it, the more we realized we kind of just want to be done with all this."

"Agreed," Derek said. "Text me the info. Do you and Desiree got all the planning?"

"We got it," Sarah murmured. "Just… just hang on until then. Then we can all be together again and we'll figure out another plan."

"Another plan?" Derek questioned.

"Yeah," Sarah said. "Desiree and I were also talking… it doesn't seem fair that we just, I don't know. We just told you that we couldn't help and practically forced you to take him."

"Hey now, you didn't force me to take him," Derek said, a little anger rising up. "And while we're at it, nobody is 'taking him in' like he's a stray. He's my brother, I've got it."

"He's OUR brother," she corrected. "And you just said you breathe wrong and he starts having a meltdown. Those don't sound like the words of someone who's 'got it.' Maybe you should come back early. We can figure something else out." Sarah argued.

"I've got it," Derek hissed, keenly aware of his awkward positioning on the floor, one hand outstretched across the luggage to grasp Spencer's. Spencer hadn't stirred at all during the phone call, but with the way Derek and Sarah were arguing every other sentence he knew he wouldn't stay asleep for long. "I've been sleeping on the floor for 14 hours holding Spencer's hand while he regresses into god knows who. You're not quitting grad school and Desiree isn't in a place to… listen, I've got this. I do."

Sarah sighed and took a second before responding. "I know," she finally said. "I'm sorry, I'm stressed. So are you obviously. You don't know how many times I've thought to myself in the last few days, 'I'll go over to moms for dinner,' or 'I don't have to understand this lecture, Spencer will just do my homework.'"

Derek laughed. "Honest to god, there is a serial killer behind bars right now because of Spencer."

"I believe it," Sarah said. "And I know you can do this. Spencer might not be able to understand it, but he's living with the right sibling."

Derek suddenly found himself unable to respond. He nodded lamely, knowing Sarah couldn't see, but his sister seemed to understand. "I love you," she said. "Tell Spencer I love him, too."

"Love you," Derek forced out. He heard Sarah's line click and he closed his phone as well. A few minutes later he heard the chimes of text messages — funeral plans coming in.

It was only then that he realized someone was standing in the doorway.

"If it wasn't wildly inappropriate, I would say that I'm staring at the two cutest brothers on the eastern sea board."

Derek smiled. "Since when were you afraid to say anything wildly inappropriate?" he asked, motioning for Garcia to come in.

She smiled and awkwardly joined them on the floor, her lime green high heels making little clicks across the hardwood. "Don't tell me you two slept here?" she asked.

"Since yesterday afternoon. And I still feel tired," Derek admitted.

"Well don't you worry, I'm here to take care of you," Garcia said. "To start, I locked your front door. I always worry constantly while you're all on cases and now I guess I'll have to worry about your safety while you're at home, too. You'd think 'lock your doors' would be FBI 101."

Derek didn't want to admit how embarrassed he was that he had forgotten something as basic as that. Instead he flashed a smile at Garcia. "At least I have the world's sexiest analyst to cover me."

"Sexy is right," she said, seeing right through him. "Second, I brought you boys breakfast. JJ said Spencer was gluten free so I brought options."

"Options?" Derek asked.

"To be honest, I'm not sure what gluten is, so I figured to be safe I would bring a little of everything."

Garcia's phone rang, a shrill techno sounding beat that reminded Derek vaguely of a video game he had played at an arcade growing up. The sound caused Spencer to stir which in turn caused Garcia to go into a near panic trying to find it in her purse.

By the time the ring tone ended, phone still unfound, Spencer had woken up and shifted stiffly in his half sitting, half laying down sleeping position.

"Hey," Derek said quietly, calmly. "How you doing?"

Spencer looked down at their interlocked hands and pulled away slightly. Derek quickly released his hand but didn't want to make any movement quite yet. The Spencer who had fallen asleep was nine years old. He wasn't quite sure who he had in front of him yet.

"In Australia, they say 'how you going,'" Spencer answered. He flexed his fingers in front of his face as if to make sure they were still working properly. "Grammatically incorrect, of course. Though American slang comes closer, the auxiliary verb 'do' would be more accurately replaced with 'feel,' though of course used in the present perfect progressive tense."

"Of course," Derek teased lightly, a small feeling of relief working its way through him. A lecture was probably a good sign, if not a slightly annoying one. "Are you _feeling_ up to some breakfast?"

"Are you feeling up to some breakfast? That’s the correct use of 'feeling' if you're referring to my emotional state of readiness," Spencer said. "To inquire about my physical state, you could have simply asked, 'are you hungry.'"

"When was the last time I asked you about your emotional state and expected to get anything other than a semantics lesson," Derek teased, knowing his remark wouldn't make any sense to his brother. The sense of relief of having his brother back in the right state of mind made him a little giddy.

Garcia laughed. "I like him, he's feisty."

Spencer snapped up, noticing Garcia for the first time. His eyes darted to his side where his bag and speech book were usually stashed, probably now both left in entry way or the kitchen. Spencer continued to flex his fingers, feeling his fingernails dig into his palm each time he made a fist. He exhaled each time he felt the pressure, the rhythmic nature of it keeping order while the anxiety caused by the stranger swirled in him. If only he could pin down the words he knew she was expecting him to say. Derek said a prayer and unzipped the side pockets of the luggage between them, finding the book on his second try. Spencer grabbed it at once and opened it to the well worn page.

"When you meet new people you say hello my name is Spencer. It is nice to meet you," he read. He looked up hesitantly from his book. "Hello my name is Spencer, it is nice to meet you."

"My name is Garcia, it's nice to meet you too," Garcia said, adopting a proper English accent.

Derek quickly jumped in. "Her name is Penelope," he said. "And she's not English."

"Or Latina," Garcia said woefully. She shot Derek a look of apology. "Sorry," she mouthed.

Fortunately, Spencer either didn't seem to notice or didn't seem to care about the host of logical problems that a woman with two names and a fake accent brought on. Derek winked at Garcia. "Are you hungry?" he asked Spencer. "Penelope brought us breakfast. And I bet she'll tell you all about the werewolf case while we eat."

"Are you hungry? Are you hungry?" Spencer's eyes lit up and he stood up all too easily from his corner. He didn't seem encumbered by his night on the floor. Derek, however, took a full minute to get to his feet, every muscle and limb screaming at him. Garcia was equally stuck between her high heels and her dress. Spencer stared at them while they got to their feet, unimpressed.

Garcia hadn't been lying when she said she had gotten a little bit of everything. It looked like a buffet had been set up in his kitchen with Styrofoam containers covering almost every surface. "Garcia…" Derek began, not sure what to say.

"I told you, I'm here to take care of you," Garcia said, kissing him on the cheek.

"Spencer told me the same thing yesterday, in so many words," Derek said.

"Hmm, imagine that. A life full of people who care about you," Garcia teased lightly. "Now if only you'd accept it once in a while."

It was hard to deny it looking at his kitchen. Derek felt the familiar tears well up but he pushed them down, opting instead to busy himself with setting the table. Garcia had all too innocently asked Spencer what gluten was and she was getting an ear full as she helped him dish up his food.

"The quickest way to be his best friend is to listen to his lectures," Derek whispered to her.

When Spencer paused, Garcia jumped in with a question. "Why aren't you supposed to eat gluten?" she asked.

Spencer paused. "Why aren't you supposed to eat gluten," he repeated several times. He looked to Derek as if he expected Derek to answer for him.

"I don't know, kid," Derek told him. "What are some reasons people avoid gluten?"

"Celiac's disease, gluten sensitivity, autism," Spencer listed. "Those are the most common.”

Garcia and Derek glanced at each other at the mention of autism. As far as Derek knew, Spencer didn't know that that diagnosis had been tossed around for years while he was in school. If it weren't for the probable abuse and trauma he had experienced prior to the Morgan's (looking all the more probable by the second), Spencer very likely would have been diagnosed right away. He wouldn’t be surprised if at some point he had been, and his mom hadn’t shared it with the rest of the family.

"Why was mom trying it?" Derek asked carefully, not sure how Spencer would react to the mention of their mom.

He didn't seem to react. "She said she read it in an article. Mom had a file folder called 'Spencer' in her cabinet. Its where she kept her articles. Autism, obsessive compulsive disorder, schizophrenia, savant syndrome, fetal alcohol syndrome. She liked to read a lot."

Spencer kept eating as if he hadn't said anything notable at all. Derek knew it was likely that Spencer didn't realize the articles had any connection to him. He made a mental note to find that folder. If his mom was working on something, he needed to figure out what it was and keep the process going.

"There weren't any articles on stabbings," Spencer stated, his mouth full of eggs. "Maybe that would have been worthwhile reading for her."

"Why's that?" Derek asked curiously, wondering if this was Spencer's way of asking about the BAU's case.

"Why's that?" Spencer repeated. "Because that’s how she died. Stabbed and stabbed and stabbed." Spencer brought his fist in to his stomach, each time harder and harder. "Stab, stab, stab."

Derek jumped out of his chair in alarm and grabbed his brother's arm, consequences be damned. The hitting was so unexpected, so violent, so sudden. "Hey now," he said, bringing his arm's securely behind his brother's body in a half bear hug, half basket hold. "Hey, Spencer, listen to my voice and try to calm down. Mom wasn't stabbed. She was hit by a car, remember?"

"No! Stab, stab, stab…" Spencer kept repeating, his voice rising in pitch. Derek knew that rise — Spencer was trying desperately to pin down the right words in the chaos of his own mind. Derek had to hold him tightly as Spencer tried in vain to wrestle himself away. Maybe if the speech book were with them Derek could try to get Spencer to write his words out, but he knew that for now his only hope was that Spencer would either find the right words to express his thoughts or Derek would have to hold him until he calmed down — however long that might be.

"Listen to me, Spencer. Listen to my voice. Its Derek, your brother. Mom wasn't stabbed. Nobody was stabbed. Find other words to use."

Spencer rocked forcefully, his arms fighting against Derek's in an attempt to hit himself in the stomach. "Mom WAS stabbed!" he shouted, his eyes wrenched shut. The silverware on the table rattled as he jerked up his knees.

"She was hit by a car," Derek told him again, trying to keep his voice forceful yet calm. The last thing he wanted was to repeat the same mistakes he made when he told Spencer the first time. He could hardly think of how he had grabbed his brother in anger without getting nauseous.

"No!" Spencer shouted. He pursed his lips together tightly, like the lid of a volcano just about to erupt, then finally blurted out, "Not your mom! My mom! I saw it! Stab, stab stab!"

Spencer immediately relaxed and Derek let go slowly, the shock of Spencer's words almost sending him to the floor. Spencer, now satisfied that he had expressed himself sufficiently, went back to eating his breakfast, but Derek stood back dumbfounded.

"Morgan…" Garcia whispered, her hand over her mouth. There were tears in her eyes.

Derek opened his mouth to respond but nothing came out. He stared at Spencer, a mix of shock and dread filling every part of his body.

_Not your mom, my mom. I saw it. Stabbed, stabbed, stabbed._

He wasn't sure how the thought formed but before he had sat back down to breakfast, he had made up his mind: On Saturday he was going back to Chicago and some way, some how he was going to find the person responsible for the hell his brother had gone through.


	10. Chapter 10

7am – get out of bed and go to the bathroom. Check.

7:15am – breakfast (day three of leftovers from Garcia’s breakfast buffet extravaganza). Check.

7:45am – bath.

Only 15 minutes were allotted for the bath, per Sarah and Desiree’s schedule, but Derek wasn’t so sure they weren’t mocking him. So far they had barely made it into the water before Spencer would start escalating. This morning when Spencer had stuck his foot over the edge of the tub and felt the water, he immediately recoiled, sliding down awkwardly on the floor.

“Too hot? Too cold? What’s wrong?” Derek had almost shouted, frustration borne more from a broken heart than impatience.

“What’s wrong?” Spencer echoed, digging his fingernails into his skin.

Derek had sat dejectedly on the closed toilet seat and held his head in his hands. “That’s the million-dollar question, kid,” he muttered. “And the answer is, I’m not mom.” Taking a deep, calming breath, he assessed the situation. Spencer, skinny and vulnerable, shaking bare-skinned on the cold tile, holding his arms across his body, scratching at both of his forearms. It was a defensive position if Derek had ever seen one. And it was more than that. Spencer looked like he was trying to crawl out of his own skin.

Suddenly, he realized what he had to do. He grabbed a towel and put it over Spencer’s shaking body and then crouched down next to him. “Spencer, listen to my voice. We’re gonna do some deep pressure squeezes, okay?” He had done this a hundred times for Spencer growing up. Awkwardly, Derek reached over and tried to wrap his arms around Spencer's shaking body as best he could. He spread out his fingers in a vain attempt to cover as much ground as possible. Derek felt his brother writhing underneath his grip, but this was different than the night in the hotel room. Derek was calm and in control of his emotions. He knew how to do this. The hotel room had been chaos — two wrecked brothers on the worst night of their lives. This was still two wrecked brothers but, as Derek was finding, it was one thing to hit rock bottom and another thing entirely to live there. Derek wasn't going to let them stay for a millisecond longer than they needed to.

Spencer felt his clammy, prickling skin, slowly even out with the even warmth and pressure from Derek's body as the world seemed to come back into focus around him. Derek felt Spencer’s body go lax inside his arms. Like a deep exhale, the moment had passed.

So bath… uncheck, for now. And also brushing teeth. And combing hair. Derek figured as long as those things happened before they saw their sisters, they could get away with the lack of hygiene. Besides, they were trying to pretend it was a brotherly vacation -- brothers were supposed to shotgun beer and eat out of discarded pizza box lids. Not brush each other's teeth.

Derek had intended to let Spencer read his admittedly pitiful collection of books on his bookshelf until lunchtime, neatly scheduled for 11am, while he checked his e-mails and messages. Instead, he awoke to Spencer’s finger poking him in the face.

"We're behind."

Derek shot up from the kitchen table. He looked around the kitchen wildly for a second before holstering his imaginary gun and taking a deep, calming breath. “What time is it?”

“11:53.”

“Did you eat lunch?”

Spencer almost laughed. “Of course I did. Its 11:53.”

“And… you ate lunch at 11. Of course,” Derek concluded, his brain still spinning a bit. “Wait – did you eat in the kitchen?”

“In the kitchen,” he confirmed.

Derek rubbed his face. He must have been exhausted if he slept through Spencer making lunch (the kid surprised him every day) and eating it at the very table he was passed out at.

“We’re behind,” Spencer said again. “You said it takes 10 minutes to drive to the library. Its 11:53.”

Right. Library at noon. Derek could feel the notebook taunting him. “Okay, lets get going. We can make it if we hurry. Go put your shoes and socks on.”

"People who hurry typically only gain microseconds,” Spencer retorted.

“Well then we’ll just have to do a lot of hurrying, kid.”

Spencer scowled as he grabbed his messenger bag and headed out the door

"Hold on,” Derek called, eyes skimming around the room for his own keys and wallet.

"Hurry up, hold on, speed up, slow down."

Derek huffed in annoyance but he couldn’t help feeling the small thrill of victory as they headed out the door. They were only ten minutes behind schedule, not bad at all considering the failure that day had been up till that point. Sarah had been pestering him for updates, too easily seeing through the facade Derek was putting him. If Derek used the phrase, "Spencer's fine," one more time, he was sure Sarah would be in Virginia before he could end the phone call.

Sarah had all but said it during their first phone call: "We'll figure something else out." The thought of Spencer staying in Chicago after the funeral was so relieving that the guilt was crushing. And yet the reaction he felt when he thought about coming back to Virginia without Spencer that it made Derek want to vomit. There was nothing he wanted more than to tell his sisters that they had had a successful day.

"Communications with satellites orbiting earth typically take approximately 1.337 light-milliseconds," Spencer told Derek as they got in the car.

"Approximately," Derek laughed.

Spencer rolled his eyes. "Its acceptable to round to the nearest thousandth of a light-millisecond."

Derek looked down at the notebook one last time before tossing it on his dashboard, as if the schedule might have changed sometime between the hundred and hundred-and-first read troughs. Derek didn't know what normally happened at Spencer's library at noon everyday but he was sure hoping it could be replicated at the library down the street. He started up the car and began the short drive. They had never gotten this far before in the notebook. Talking about milliseconds and satellites seemed to be helpful. Sarah and Desiree had written a few helpful tips in the front (which was insulting at first, but he had to admit, they had come in handy). _#1: If you need him to do anything, get him started on a lecture. He'll talk straight through whatever task you're trying to get him to do and won't even notice he's anxious._ As Spencer continued to lecture, Derek wondered how far this strategy could take them. Maybe Spencer could just lecture continuously as they travelled back to Chicago. Maybe they could figure out something so he could continue on for the viewing, for the funeral, and then… Derek shook his head, clearing those ridiculous thoughts from his head. Chicago wasn't until tomorrow.

Today they were pulling up to the library, on time (ish), without any meltdowns all day. That was enough of a victory..

Spencer fell silent from his ten minute lecture as Derek turned off the car. They sat quietly for a minute in the car until Derek finally asked, "What happens at the library at noon?" All this effort and he had no idea why they were there.

"What happens at the library at noon?" Spencer repeated. "I clock in."

"You clock in?" Derek sputtered. "As in, you have a job at the library?"

"I  _had_ a job at _the Crossley Memorial Library_ ," Spencer corrected.

Derek sighed. "Right," he said. "Had. Okay, how about we go in to this library and you can read as much as you want and when we come back from Chicago we can see about getting you work here?"

Spencer nodded slightly. "How many library books can I take out at a time?"

"Don't kill me kid, but I don't even have a library card," Derek confessed, suppressing a laugh as Spencer looked at him, horrified. "Come on, let's go."

As they walked in, Spencer's eyes lit up. Spencer had studied in some fairly high-end libraries during the course of his reign as Chicago's youngest doctor, but "his library" was the run down out dated community center off shoot down the street. It paled in comparison to Derek's modest neighborhood library. It was like Derek had taken his brother to Disneyworld. Spencer was immediately in his element and seemed to know exactly where to go to find the books he wanted. Within minutes, he had amassed a small mountain and was settling down at a table.

Derek felt the vibration of his cell phone in his pocket. He flipped it open and sighed. "Call me - Hotch." He quickly sent back a text: "At the library with Spencer. Text?"

He wasn't prepared for the next text: "At the plaza? I'm coming to you."

Derek sat down next to Spencer who was devouring books faster than Derek could believe. It had been too long since he had seen Spencer so relaxed. He put his hand gingerly over the page of a book but Spencer ignored him, pulling the next page from underneath Derek's palm. He was in "the zone" — he didn't need to know that Hotch was coming. It was another thing that Derek envied his brother for: the ability to be so totally captivated that nothing could come in and ruin it.

The books were on science, body language, sociology, zoology. They seemed to be a random assortment of whatever Spencer had been able to get his hands on as quickly as possible. Derek opened one on pack behavior in whale pods and read half-heartedly until Hotch arrived. He looked comically out of place in a library, his stern face and business suit a stark contrast to the families who were milling around searching for Harry Potter and Twilight.

"Hotch," Derek greeted, nodding to the next table over. Hotch sat down and Derek joined him. Suddenly he realized that the last time they had seen each other was in Loring. That seemed like a lifetime ago even though it had only been a few days.

"Morgan." Hotch looked Derek up and down, attempting to glean something off of Derek's appearance that would help him out in the forthcoming conversation. Coming up empty, he settled for, "How are you and Spencer doing?"

"Spencer's fine," Derek answered automatically.

Hotch paused. "I'm glad to hear it," he said cautiously. "But I asked about you as well."

"I'm fine," Derek said, but the words died out as they left his mouth. He swallowed thickly. "I'm fine," he tried again. "Really. Today's better." Lies.

"Don't feel like you need to push too hard. Nobody is expecting you back at work until you’re ready."

"Hotch—," Derek began, but he was cut off.

"After the way things ended in Loring, I wanted to give you some time to sort things out. I took the liberty of letting the Bureau know you would be taking the rest of your personal days for the year and after that, I've applied for a leave of absence for you."

"Hotch—," Derek began again, but Hotch continued.

"You don't have to take it," he said. "But you know how things have been for us. Its better to make a plan now, get it approved. We can always change it if need be." Derek could only nod lamely in response. Hotch was right, they needed to get a leave of absence approved and through the bureaucratic red tape that always seemed to be a little too tightly wound around the BAU. And he most likely would need it. Spencer needed full time care and Derek was determined to be the one to give it — there wasn't another option on the table.

Logically, Derek understood that Hotch wouldn't have applied for the leave if he hadn't wanted to ultimately retain Derek on the team. But there was still something in him that desperately needed to make sure Hotch knew how badly he wanted to be retained.

"Hotch…" Derek began for the third time. This time, his boss stayed silent. "Look, I appreciate all the work you're doing, I know you stick your neck out there any time you propose a change to the BAU to the higher ups. The BAU means everything to me, the team is my family. But this is family, Spencer is family. And he means everything to me, too. I don't… I don't know what I was thinking in Loring. I'm sorry."

"Spencer gave us the direction we needed to correctly profile and catch a serial killer. And it was at my invitation that you both came. You have nothing to be sorry for," Hotch said. "Ever."

Derek nodded lamely, at a complete loss for words.

"You're leaving tomorrow?" Hotch asked, sensing Derek's effete.

"Tomorrow morning," Derek answered. "Funeral's on Saturday, viewing on Friday. Gives us tomorrow and Thursday to get some things figured out." Like who abused Spencer, Derek wanted to add.

Hotch stood up and Derek followed suit. He looked beyond Derek at Spencer, very happily surrounded by books. "Earlier in my office when I told you that it took a while for Jack to get back to being a kid after…"

"Yeah."

"Its difficult to watch someone you love struggle. Remember you have family here to fall back on."

"Yeah," Derek said quietly, gratefully.

"I have to head back. Please don't hesitate to call for anything. Anytime. And I'll let you know when I hear back about the leave of absence."

"Thanks," Derek said. "For everything."

The bullpen felt eerily empty as Hotch made his way into his office. Derek's desk was empty, of course, though still covered in papers made only slightly neater by Spencer's stacking and organizing the week before. Emily's desk was also empty. Hotch stopped by JJ's office and found a third empty chair. He checked his watch - still lunch time, though improbable that Emily and JJ both had time to go somewhere for lunch. Something wasn't right.

No sooner had Hotch sat down in his chair than Garcia, JJ, and Emily burst into his office. The neon peacock feather adorned hat bobbed on Garcia's head as she caught her breath enough to blurt out, "Sir, forgive the massive, epic intrusion, but I have massive, epic information. Permission to speak freely."

Hotch gave her a glare in reply.

"Right. So the other day I brought breakfast over to the Morgan McHottie house and Spencer ended up getting really upset. Crying, hitting, the whole works. Morgan had to restrain him. I mean Derek. Cause they're both Morgans. That could be confusing."

"It really couldn't be," Emily said dryly, cutting in. "Basically, Hotch, Spencer was shouting that he had seen his mom get stabbed. I believe the exact words were, 'thats how she died, stabbed, stabbed, stabbed.'"

"I didn't want to dig, sir, but… I dug. And dug and dug and dug and I think I found something. Morgan, Derek Morgan said that nobody knew what happened before Spencer was dropped off at the gas station where CPS picked him up. But just an hour before, a woman was found stabbed several blocks away. Nobody ID'ed the body, she was a prostitute and a drug addict. What if it was Spencer's mother?"

"Were there any suspects?" Hotch asked.

JJ stepped forward with a single piece of paper and handed it to Hotch. "A woman named Diana Reid. Former college professor, diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. Small traces of her blood were found at the scene on a piece of wood found next to the victim. According to the ME and police reports, the victim had defensive wounds, they thought she likely tried and failed to fight off Reid with the plank. The knife used in the stabbing had a serrated edge that the ME was able to link to multiple stabbings in the Chicago area, all homeless, prostitutes, addicts.”

“Was she convicted?” Hotch asked.

“No, because here’s where it gets even stranger. Diana Reid went missing 17 years ago. The day the woman was stabbed was the day our unsub fell off the grid."

"From what Derek has said of Spencer's early childhood, there's no way he travelled several blocks and sought out help from a stranger after seeing his mother die," Hotch said. "Our unsub brought Spencer to the gas station and then went on the run."

"Serial killers never stop killing," Emily said, her eyes pleading with Hotch.

"I assume you have a call out—."

"We've already been invited in," JJ said. "Its a poor Chicago neighborhood. They were thrilled that the BAU was interested in cleaning up a few cold cases, especially one involving a serial killer."

The three of them held their breath as they waited for Hotch's answer.

"If we receive a more pressing case, we drop the cold case," Hotch told them. Garcia melted against Emily. JJ stayed to give Hotch the rest of the information while the other two women rushed out of the room.

Garcia exploded first. "Wait until I tell Morgan — Morgan's — about this!" she squealed.

Emily put her hand on Garcia's arm. "Tone it down, Garcia," she warned. "The news you're giving them is that we are investigating Spencer's mother's death while they are both on the way home to bury Fran Morgan. It doesn't get much worse."

"Ok maybe its not the best news," she conceded. "But its something we can do to help them. Derek, Spencer, Sarah, Desiree, they're going to be asking 'why' their entire lives. Why did their mom have to die? I can't do anything about that. But I can try to answer a bunch of other 'why's. JJ told me that when she visited them at the hotel, she told them that she wished there was something she could do to change this. Spencer is hurting, there's some serious trauma going on. And maybe if we figure out what happened, we can change that."

All Emily could do was smile in support as Garcia pulled out her cell phone and dialed Derek's number.

"Hey sexy, I have some news for you. What if I told you that I got Spencer a ride to Chicago tomorrow on the BAU jet? … well its a long story… Don't kill me but here's what happened…"


	11. Chapter 11

If Derek had given it any serious thought, he might have expected Garcia to make an attempt to come to his mother’s funeral. He would have shut her down with a few smooth words and that smile she fell for every time, assuring her that he knew she cared, but he was fine, and the BAU needed her more than he did. She wouldn’t have believed him, but she would have known not to push it and instead thrown herself into decorating his desk, sending him inappropriate memes, and racheting up the flirtacious banter a couple of hundred notches to make him smile.

He never imagined a scenario in which he and Spencer would be flying back to Chicago on the BAU jet with Hotch, Emily, JJ, Gideon, and Garcia in tow to investigate yet another serial killer.

This time, at least, he had sent a text to Sarah and Desiree letting his sisters know what was going on. They were none too happy to have the added stress of an investigation – “God, Derek, isn’t this already fucking hard enough?” had been yelled at him in stereo – but with Spencer’s clear lack of closure over his birth mother’s murder and the very real threat that reliving the trauma could cause serious damage to their already struggling brother, all three knew that this needed to happen. And unlike Loring, Derek had already been talked to by three of his teammates on three separate occasions about how unwelcome he was at the CPD (Emily’s speech had been full of threats and vague reminders of how little he actually knew about her).

Derek watched Garcia and Spencer from across the aisle. Garcia hadn’t been invited to Chicago, she had simply walked on with go bag and completely avoided eye contact with Hotch until the plane had lifted off the runway. Spencer had taken an immediate liking to Garcia, which was ironic because Garcia couldn’t seem to get through a conversation with him without saying something that made Derek’s whole body tense up. But Spencer didn’t seem to mind Garcia’s running commentary or the pop culture references she always had on hand. Sometimes Derek didn’t know what Garcia – Penelope – was talking about, he had no idea how Spencer was fine with her colorful stream of consciousness.

Considering Derek still felt like if he breathed wrong he was likely to cause a meltdown.

And who knew what would trigger the next flashback.

Derek pulled one of his headphone off his ear and wasn’t at all surprised by the conversation going down.

“Meta. A prefix in chemistry denoting a compound formed by dehydration.”

“False. Meta is all about transcendence and self awareness. Like Game Developer Tycoon being a video game about designing video games.” Garcia waved a colorful fluffy pen across the table in Spencer’s face. Derek smiled at the sight of two of his favorite people chatting, despite the complete lack of actual communication happening.

Both looked to Emily, who was resignedly holding her phone, clealy not as engaged in the game as her two tablemates. “Meta,” she read aloud, “from the greek word ‘after,’ a prefix used in English to indicate a concept which is an abstraction behind another concept, used to complete or add to the latter.”

“One point for Penelope,” Garcia said, making a check mark in the air with her pen.

Spencer shook his head. “One point for Spencer,” he echoed obstinently. “It can also indicate the position of substituents in aromatic cyclic compounds, which means that I’m correct.”

“But we’ll never know because nobody else on the plane can verify that those are even real words,” Emily joked dryly.

Garcia snorted out a laugh, but Spencer frowned. “I’m on the plane and I have a PHD in Chemistry.” Both women’s heads snapped toward Derek.

“Tell ‘em, kid,” Derek said, smiling softly with pride.

“Tell ‘em, kid. I have bachelors degrees in psychology, sociology, and philosophy, and three doctorates – chemistry, engineering, and mathematics,” Spencer said without a hint of humility. Emily’s phone thunked onto the table in surprise. “I also have an eidedic memory and can read 20,000 words per minute. My IQ is 187, although the Stanford-Binet IQ Scale has since been updated by Gale Roid in 2003...”

Content that Spencer had just dropped enough of to keep anyone occupied for hours with questions, Derek turned his attention to the file in JJ’s hand. In it was everything Garcia had been able to dig up about Spencer’s birth mom’s murder. And there wasn’t much.

JJ lightly elbowed him and he took his headphones off all the way, trying to remove his bone deep exhaustion along with them. JJ caught Emily’s eye and she quietly moved from across the aisle, settling next to Hotch. Garcia doubled her excitement at whatever Spencer was lecturing on to keep him distracted.

Time to get to work.

JJ laid out the case file. On top was a paperclipped image of a woman on a cold autopsy table. JJ slid the picture from the paperclip, revealing a few more graphic images underneath. The woman’s gaunt body and clothing screamed drug addict. “Jane Doe, approxiatemly 25 years old, found dead in an alley on April 12, 1990 from multiple stab wounds, including several on the neck. These,” she said, pointing to a few long slashes in the pictures, “were made post mortem. The ME said the murder weapon was a small blade, possibly a pocket knife. The serrated edge and bent blade caused a distinct wound which was linked to multiple other murders, all similar victimology. Prostitutes, drug addicts, homeless, women that nobody would miss. A passerby found this victim’s body and called CPD at 11:30am.”

“Sexual sadist, judging from the post mortem wounds. Strange that our UnSub stabbed instead of slashed, like one would normally do at the neck,” Emily said, pointing to the wounds which were clearly lacerations, not the smooth eviscerating cuts of a slit throat.

“If it was a pocket knife, that’s a strange choice for a murder weapon. It could indicate that this was a spontaneous murder, not pre-meditated. Maybe a crime of passion?” Derek suggested.

“A sexual sadist with established hunting patterns and victimology – a crime of passion doesn’t fit the profile,” Gideon said. “Its more likely the pocket knife was used because it was convenient. Easy to hide. And even if it was seen, it doesn’t arouse suspicion or fear like a gun or a larger knife would.”

“What do we know about the UnSub?” Hotch asked.

“The police named Diana Reid as a person of interest,” JJ said. Each of the profiler’s heads snapped up.

“A woman?” Emily asked in surprise. “That’s extremely rare.”

JJ flipped to another page in the case file and pulled out a picture of a woman straight out of the 70’s – feathered hair, bright eyes, an air of regency about her. “Former college professor of English Literature, fired from her job at the University of Nevada when she began experiencing some mental health issues. She was arrested twice for disturbing the peace. According to a medical record, it looks like she was being treated for paranoid schizophrenia.”

“Was she committed?” Gideon asked.

JJ shook her head. “Records show one brief psych hold, but she left AMA after the required 48 hour stay. Her blood and fingerprints were found on a piece of wood at the crime scene. Local PD thought our victim might have tried to fight back.”

JJ laid out the three pictures of other women, all looked relatively similar – thin, dirty, blood dried in their matted hair. Derek stared at the picture of the most recently killed woman, trying to find resemblance to his brother in her face, but her features looked as foreign to him as the word “mom” felt when attached to her. Derek would never forget when CPS came to their house to drop off Spencer, or the millions of ways they tried to make up for the trauma of his unknown childhood, or their adoption celebration at the courthouse – all memories which marked Spencer as distinctly not-Fran’s-child. But still, there lived a parallel truth that Spencer had been Derek’s brother from birth. The idea that Spencer had lived with this woman in the photograph for nine years, that there were nine years in which Derek hadn’t been Spencer’s brother, felt as foreign to him as the woman herself.

Derek felt the gentle nudge of JJ’s elbow again and he forced himself back to reality. “…slashed when the fourth victim was stabbed – its inconsistent,” Emily was saying. “It would indicate an entirely different mindset of the UnSub. Sure, similar murder weapons, but the MO is completely different. And how extensive was the manhunt for Diana Reid?”

“Four prostitutes, probably drug addicted, all homeless,” Gideon said. “How much time do you think they really put into this case?”

“No ID on the last victim, no other physical evidence aside from a fingerprint of someone who hasn’t been on the grid for the better part of two decards, possibly not even connected to the three murders prior which was our only lead. This is the definition of cold case,” JJ said.

“But we have something that the CPD didn’t,” Hotch said, measuring his words carefully. “We have a witness.”

The idea hung in the air like an inhaled breath until Derek shot forward. “There’s no way in hell I’m letting Spencer go through an interview – we’re doing this to try to help Spencer, not traumatize him even more.”

“No, we’re doing this to catch a serial killer,” Hotch shot back. “The BAU has been invited in to catch the murderer of at least four women. Trust me, I understand what it means to ask your family member to give a witness statement about the murder of their mother.”

The entire plane stilled as Hotch and Derek stared into one another. JJ and Emily exchanged a meaningful glance and then actively attempted to look anywhere but at their boss. Gideon sat back in his seat. Even Garcia had faded off mid sentence and was starting across the aisle, leaving Spencer silently waiting for her to finish her question so he could continue his lecture, gently rocking back and forth impatiently.

Hotch’s eyes never left Derek’s. “Trust me,” he repeated again, quieter this time.

Swallowing thickly, Derek nodded. Maybe Sarah and Desiree had been right. What the hell had he been thinking, _wasn’t this already fucking hard enough_?

“But, um, the, reverse function something? How does it work?”

Derek looked over at Garcia, who was bumbling her way back to a conversation she hadn’t been following in the first place.

“The inverse function theorem,” Spencer immediately answered, saying it like _any kindergartener should know this._ “In multivariable calculus, this theorum can be generalized to any continuously differentiable, vector valued function, whose Jacobian determinent is nonzero at a point in its domain, giving a formula for the Jacobian matrix of the inverse.”

“I love it when you talk dirty,” Garcia said, giving a wink to Derek.

JJ cleared the files off the table and cleared her throat, always the professional at diffusing a situation. “CPD had to reassign this case to a junior detective – the former lead on the case retired a decade ago. They’re happy to have us come in, but I don’t think we should be expecting much,” she said.

“We’ve worked with less,” Hotch said. “When we touch down, the team will head to CPD headquarters. Morgan, just a reminder, you’re on a leave of absense. I don’t want to see you at the station.” Derek nodded. It was the flimsiest of reasons Hotch could give, his way of saying _keep Spencer out of our way_ after the scene he made in Loring, Virginia.

Or maybe much closer to the truth, Derek knew, Hotch was telling him, _its okay, go be with your family._

The plane suddenly lurched down, routine for anyone who was used to flying, but Spencer’s hand immediately flew to his side as he hammered himself in the thigh. Derek shot out of his chair and maneuvered into the seat across from Garcia. “It was just turbulance,” Derek said quickly. “Happens all the time.”

“Happens all the time,” Spencer repeated, “happens all the time.” He rung his hands together tightly and then brough his fist down again or a second hit. Derek reached over and blocked the blow awkwardly with his forearm.

“Kid, we can’t do this on the plane,” he said. “You’ve gotta calm down. We’ll land pretty soon.”

“Pretty soon,” Spencer repeated again. The pitch of his voice was rising, Derek knew what that meant. He felt the all to familiar panic of once again failing to keep Spencer calm, of wishing and willing with all his might to make his brother understand, with all the helplessness of knowing that he had no idea how to get through to him. Garcia looked to Derek to take the lead, but the bone deep weariness was creeping back over him. A half an hour – that’s how long they would be in the air for. Just a half an hour longer, and then Sarah and Desiree would take over and he would get a break. He’d be able to let go of the breath he’d been holding for the past week. He could have a drink, take a nap, find some semblance of the confident-and-in-control Derek that had been killed along with his mother.

He felt a presence next to him and looked up to see Gideon. Wordlessly, he slid in next to Garcia. “Hey Spencer,” Gideon said evenly, “I’m Jason, we haven’t really had a chance to meet.”

Spencer’s eyes remained shut, hands still ringing together tightly, and a slight hum escaped his lips, but Gideon continued on unfazed. “When we ride on airplanes, sometimes a change in air pressure can cause the plane to suddenly lose altitude or rock from side to side. That’s normal and it doesn’t mean that there is something wrong with the plane. Its also normal for it to be surprising, and that can be scary. Its okay to feel scared when you’re in an airplane and you experience turbulance.”

Spencer didn’t respond, but he didn’t try to hurt himself again.

Gideon repeated again, “When airplanes experience a change in air pressure, it causes turbulence which can be surprising. Its okay to be scared when something unexpected happens like turbulance. That’s why Derek made sure you were wearing your seatbelt.”

Gideon pulled out his cell phone and placed it on the table. On the screen was a brightly colored egg timer type graphic, set for 30 minutes. Derek belatedly recognized it as a kind of visual timer; he had seen his mom using one for Spencer once when he was on a college break. Spencer opened an eye; the recognition was instantaneous. “When this timer goes off, we will be on the ground, or almost on the ground,” Gideon said.

Spencer seemed to uncoil a bit. “When the timer goes off…” Spencer repeated.

“We will be on the ground, or almost on the ground,” Gideon confirmed. “Who will be waiting for us when we arrive?”

“Who will be waiting – Sarah, and Desiree, and Mom.”

Derek sighed. “This has been a problem all morning,” he explained to Gideon. “To him, Chicago is home, and home is Mom, he’s not seperating out the concepts.”

Gideon nodded thoughtfully and grabbed a pen and his reading glasses out of his pocket. “Can I have your speech book?” he asked.

Spencer reached into his bag and handed the worn book over. He watched as Gideon flipped open to a blank page and wrote out a few words, then pushed it back across to Spencer.

“Can you read that for me?” Gideon asked.

“My mom passed away in a car accident,” Spencer read.

Derek glanced at Gideon, unsure, then watched as Gideon tapped the page of the book. “So who will be waiting for us at the airport?” he asked gently.

“Who will be waiting – Sarah and Desiree,” he answered, then looked down and, haltingly, read aloud: “My mom passed away in a car accident.”


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: The usual mentions of past abuse.
> 
> THANK YOU to everyone who has left kudos and comments. It makes my day more than I care to admit lol. I’ve really enjoyed writing this story so far and I LOVE hearing that people are enjoying it out there :) so drop a line and say hi if you haven’t yet!

Chapter 12

Fran Morgan, in one word, was  _life._

Under her, the house was never still. There was always some dessert baking in the oven, neighborhood kids naturally gravitated toward playing in their yard, coffee always seemed to be on and fresh right when someone showed up at her door needing to talk. She didn’t have much money to share, but it would have almost been a shame if she had; she was much better at giving hugs, bringing over casseroles, knowing the exact right thing to say at exactly the right time.

 _How did she do that_ , Derek wondered as he stared at the now-empty kitchen table. The house was still, even the air seemed to be thick and frozen around him, and nearly silent save for footsteps echoing on the old wood floors.

“It seems wrong, doesn’t it?” Sarah asked, appearing behind him. He turned to see his sister, sad smile on her face. “After she died, there were people in and out constantly… I think I brewed more coffee than I ever have before, and you know that’s saying something. But then the house emptied out, and it was  _so quiet_. I got up that morning, everyone was gone, you and Spencer were gone, I went to make myself some coffee and I just… I couldn’t. I don’t think I’ve ever made coffee for myself in this house, ever. Mom always… I actually picked up the pot and tried pouring it into a cup before I realized the pot was empty and of course cause she wasn’t there to make it. I… it was like I would think ‘I need to talk to mom,’ and I’d turn around and she’d be standing there with two cups of coffee and that smile she’d get…” her voice broke. “How did she always just know exactly what to do all the time? The other day I was looking through funeral planning websites, like god I’m sitting there searching ‘funeral homes near me’ on Yelp, and I actually think to myself, ‘I’ll ask mom if she has any suggestions.’”

Derek laughed. “You have no idea how many times in the past few days I’ve wanted to call Mom, especially about Spencer. The first time we successfully made it through the bedtime routine I wanted to call her and tell her we were doing alright, then it hits me, I’m doing Spencer’s routine because she’s not there to do it.”

Sarah snaked her arm around Derek’s waist and leaned into him. “People keep asking how I’m doing. I keep saying I’m sad, but honestly, I just feel empty. Is that a thing?”

 “We’re standing here in Fran Morgan’s kitchen and we aren’t being force fed donuts and you’re asking  _me_ for emotional advice… I’d say empty seems about right.”

“You know, for as cocky as you are, you undersell yourself sometimes.”

“Oh I’m cocky, huh?” Derek teased. “I prefer confident.”

His younger sister rolled her eyes. “Seriously though. I don’t know like a tenth of what you do at the FBI, but I know when something’s going down, you’re the one who knows what to say to the bad guys to get them to let their victims go, and you comfort the victims and their families through stuff I can’t imagine… I know you have all your fancy training, but you don’t think that’s Mom in there, too?” she said, placing her hand over her heart.

Derek could only swallow thickly and kiss the top of her head. He took a few deep breaths. “It hasn’t felt that way,” he admitted. “But thanks.”

Sarah smiled. “Hey, maybe I’ve got a little bit of Mom in here too. Speaking of which… have you been up to her room yet?”

Derek hadn’t given her room any thought and yet his stomach plummeted as he knew immediately what he would find. An unmade bed, dirty socks discarded on the floor, a dirty mug or two on the nightstand – all marks of a person who assumed they’d be coming home that evening. He had stood that exact same room more times than he could count as a profiler trying to glean insight on a murder victim or abductee.

“I’ll take that as a no,” Sarah said. “You should, when you’re up to it. I thought it would be upsetting but it was weirdly comforting. Having all her stuff around me, like I was surrounded by actual-her instead of funeral-her. Like she was right there again. Ugh, I probably sound like one of your Unsubs.”

“We can ask Spencer what the psych textbooks say about it later,” Derek teased. “I’m gonna bring my stuff upstairs.”

He peeled himself away from his little sister and grabbed his luggage from the living room. Desiree and Spencer had gone upstairs a while ago, but Derek had delayed, wandering around the house aimlessly. It was as if the thick stillness of the house was quicksand, hard to trudge through, hard to breathe in. He felt a literal ache in his chest as he thought about how he would never again see his mom coming down the stairs, greeting her son at the door for one of his precious few trips home. That smile she would get when she would first catch sight of him – he was always struck by how young and vibrant she looked, her eyes sparkling as she took him in.

He was pulled from his thoughts by the sound of running water. For all the screaming and meltdowns about the bathtub in the last week, he couldn’t resist checking to see how Desiree was doing it. As he ascended the stairs, the happy voices coming from inside the bathroom taunted him. Derek cracked open the door and poked his head in. Spencer was standing in a shower, body obscured by the closed shower curtain, with Desiree sitting on the closed toilet across from him, laughing at something he had just said.

The shower. Of course. Spencer  _always_ showered. In fact, the Morgan’s didn’t even have a tub – Desiree and Sarah had broken it during one of their epic pre-teen fights (though they had still never resolved if it was a wild kick from Sarah or Desiree’s softball bat that cracked the side of the tub). It had probably been broken before Spencer moved in which is why Derek had never seen him be afraid of the tub, but Derek found it hard to believe that his mom had never discovered Spencer’s hatred toward baths. For all their travels with Spencer’s schooling, there had to have been more than one meltdown in a motel or dorm suite tub. None of that, of course, explained why he was so afraid of the tub, but it did explain why Derek had never seen Spencer in a bath, and why he hadn’t realized he solely took showers.

Desiree noticed Derek in the doorway and told Spencer she’d be right back. She slipped into the hallway with him. “He was kinda gross,” she said, as if she had to explain why Spencer was showering in the mid afternoon.

“We didn’t do great with the bathroom stuff,” Derek admitted.

“And what  _did_ go well?” Desiree countered. “All I keep hearing from you is what went wrong.”

Derek stiffened with anger and his sister’s unexpected hostility. “Hey now, that’s not fair. I’m doing the best I can.”

“Well maybe that’s not enough. It looked like he hadn’t showered in days.”

“He hadn’t,” Derek said. “Cause every time we got close to the bath tub he would start screaming.”

That made Desiree pause. “Its… he showers. I guess he’s always showered since he was adopted. What do you mean he would start screaming?” 

Derek told her about the baths as well as the first night at his house and the breakfast table incident. She had heard some of it on the phone but hearing Derek explain it in person was another story. “All this with the trauma and the serial killer and everything” – she rubbed her face with her hands, “I think we need to have a family meeting about if its really the right thing for Spencer to leave behind the only stability he has while he’s going through so much. He’s got the house here, his job, his doctors, a routine, me and Sarah nearby.”

“We talked about this, Des,” Derek said. “We talked and you and Sarah aren’t in a position --.” 

“Well maybe I’m reevaluating that position,” Desiree interrupted. “I know you’re trying to take care of the family but, come on, you have to be seeing it too. Its not going well. You aren’t exactly taking good care of him.”

Derek had to take a deep breath to keep from seeing red. “Spencer and I are doing the best we can. Both of us. I know I’m not perfect, and neither is he. You’re acting like he’s a two-year-old. He’s a grown man who just lost his mom and I might not be screaming in a bathtub, but I’m not coping any better than he is. But we’re getting through it.”

“But it could be better here, Derek. Forget the serial killer and his past and the FBI investigation. We already know his previous life was traumatizing, and wasn’t it already enough? Why put him through all this again? Stop being such a control freak!”

Derek felt blindsided. “Where is this coming from? We all talked and we all agreed that Spencer would come to Virginia with me and that the BAU would come here to investigate.”

“Yeah but – god Derek – you know how you are,” Desiree said angrily. “Its not like there was any real chance that he was gonna live with me or Sarah. Or that you were going to miss the chance of solving the Spencer Mystery. You had your mind made up from the second the conversation started. You’ve always gotta be the one in control, taking care of everything, even if in reality you can’t.”

Before Derek could respond, three things happened at the same time. Sarah appeared at the top of the stairs looking completely appalled by her sister. They heard the loud squeak of the old faucet head being turned as Spencer turned off the shower. And Derek’s phone began to ring. After a second of staring at one another, each sibling went to attend to their own problem, Sarah stalking after Desiree into the bathroom.

Derek answered his phone before even looking at the caller ID, glad for the distraction. “Morgan,” he answered roughly.

“Woah, not even a ‘hey sexy?” he heard on the line.

He took a deep, calming breath. “Sorry, Garcia. What’s up?”

“I… I just wanted to see how you were doing,” she said. “I can’t stop thinking about you. I want to be with you.”

Derek wanted to make one of their signature dirty comments but his sisters were still within ear shot and he was fairly certain Desiree would strangle him if she thought he was flirting at a time like this. He took another deep breath. “I know you want to help, and you are helping by figuring out Spencer’s past. If we could learn anything that could help us help him get through this... you’re right where I need you the most, okay?” He secretly hoped Desiree had heard that part. “I promise, I’m fine. Spencer’s fine. Really. We’re doing okay.”

He could practically hear Garcia deflating on the other end. “Okay,” she agreed. The line clicked off.

Fight or flight mode almost always ended in “fight” for Derek, but in the moment, all he wanted to do was fly to his mom’s room. As irrational as it was, he wanted to be surrounded by her… maybe if he felt at peace there then he would know he was doing a good job leading the family. As he entered her room though, the only thing he could feel was a blank void inside, like someone had scooped out the part that should have been feeling sadness, and left him completely empty. No, not empty, he realized. Exhausted. He was completely spent, every last drop had been wrung out of him, used up, pulled out. He bypassed the pictures on his mom’s wall, the filing cabinet he had been intent on reading through just a few days ago, the clean clothes in the basket that would forever be waiting to be put away in her dresser. He went straight for her bed and was asleep before his head hit the pillow.

 

_________

 

Miles away, the team assembled in front of a set of white boards at a local CPD station. The pictures from JJ’s file were hung neatly in a column with dates written underneath them – four victims on one side of the board, and then Diana Reid’s picture on the other.

“Lets review,” Hotch began. “What do we know?”

JJ naturally took the lead. “All four victims were prostitutes and drug addicts, or at least drug users. ME found dried semen on several of the bodies but there was never a match made or even confirmation that any sexual acts had happened right before or in conjunction with their deaths. The first two victims were identified, both sets of parents stated that their daughters had run away after some trouble at home. The third and fourth victims were never identified. The first three victims had their throats slashed and the fourth was stabbed in the throat. The ME said those wounds were the cause of death, though the Unsub had his fun post-mortem… cuts, bruises, slashes. Right now our only person of interest is a female, Diana Reid, but if it is a male, its possible that he raped them pre or post-mortem.”

“Look at that timeline,” Emily said, referring to the dates of their deaths listed under each picture. “No discernable pattern to the cooling off period. The Unsub didn’t accelerate his or her timeline.”

“That would indicate that these were crimes of opportunity, he or she didn’t actively hunt in order to seek a victim. The Unsub was patient, able to hold off until the right victim came to him,” JJ said.

“Which looks to mostly have been related to sociological factors,” Hotch said. “He or she targeted women who could be easily overpowered and wouldn’t be missed.”

Emily walked closer to the board. “A patient sexual sadist. Waiting until the next opportunity strikes. Probably not hunting due to the erratic timeline.” She turned around to face the team. “Do you think he or she could have kept a victim with them? The only way a sadist is waiting this patiently is if he or she has someone close to them they’re able to let out their sadistic urges out on. I mean the Unsub waited from August 1988 to April 12, 1990. That a pretty long gap.”

“Wait, April 12th\-- that was just last week,” JJ said.

“We need to identify victims three and four. He might have held them for longer than we realize to abuse them and release his urges on. The more we can learn about them, the more we can learn about the Unsub. Let’s see what we can do on our own before bringing Spencer in. Garcia, I need you to compile a list of women born from 1960-1975 who were runaways, or reported missing, and later booked for solicitation or prostitution in the mid to late 80’s. These women’s families would have never gotten closure. The anniversary of the death of the fourth victim was just last week. It might be worth looking at social media, newspapers, missing person posts. Families never give up hope, even decades later.”

Her soft voice spoke up from the back. “Sorry sir, but I’ve gotta…”

Hotch looked up as Garcia for the first time as she faded off, suddenly losing her gumption to defy him mid-sentence as she met his firey eyes. She held her cell phone to her chest. “Do you have something more important to be doing?” Hotch asked sternly.

She swallowed. “Actually, I think I do.”

 

__________

 

Derek didn’t know how long he had been sleeping, he couldn’t even remember getting into bed, but he was sure when he had come into his mom’s room he had been alone.

 

He took a deep breath and smiled, genuinely smiled, for the first time in what felt like an eternity.

 

Spencer’s skinny body was curled up next to his in bed, his messy hair long since air dried on the pillow.

 

He didn’t know who had covered them up with their mom’s quilt, but it probably had to do with his blonde haired best friend sitting in the overstuffed chair in the corner, silently scrolling through her phone. He caught her eye and smiled at her. She winked and blew him a kiss.

 

He was surrounded by his brother and his best friend… and his mom. He felt a wave of peace hit him that began to pull him back down into sleep. He knew the worst was yet to come – the funeral, Spencer’s victim interview, showdowns with Desiree, and yet he felt a sense of calm, of assurance, that he would be able to get through anything. Not alone, with gritted teeth and muscle, but as a strong and capable son of Fran Morgan, surrounded by his mom and his family – both blood and chosen. He felt himself drift off into a peaceful, dreamless sleep.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for all the kudos and comments. Its cheesy, but they really do mean so much to me. Thank you.
> 
> TW for the usual mentions of abuse and murder.

The next time Derek opened his eyes, he was all alone. The room was uncomfortably warm despite the still cool temperatures of Chicago in April. It probably had to do with the knitted afghans piled on his mother’s bed. The afternoon sun wasn’t peeking through the curtains anymore but he could see light outside. He reached a sweaty arm around to his cell phone and checked the time. 8:22am. With a small jolt, he realized the afternoon sun had passed… along with the night, and sunrise.

Derek let himself orient to his surroundings. Quietly, like a song starting to play, he could hear the soft sounds of laughter and clanking dishes floating up from downstairs. He peeled himself off the bed and went to the sink to splash some water on his face. Derek took a long look at himself in the mirror.

“You can do this,” he told himself, reaching down for the shreds of his confidence and pulling them over his face like a mask. Plan the funeral, figure out how to go on without his mother, catch a serial killer, keep his brother from going insane, and then get back to Virginia. Together.

There was a soft knock on the bedroom door. Derek turned to see Sarah poking her head in. “Hey,” she said softly. “Feeling better?”

“Something like that,” he said.

“Yeah I don’t know if a 16-hour nap is helpful or just leaves you feeling more out of it,” she said. She crossed the room and folded Derek into a hug. “You’ve been working so hard to keep it all together. No wonder you were so exhausted.”

“Tell that to Des,” he quipped, remembering her words from yesterday.

He and Sarah sat down on their mom’s bed. “Yeah, about that,” she said. “You missed about 15 and a half hours of epic fighting and way too much talking, but she’s come around.” Immediately, Derek knew something must have happened with Spencer, and Sarah read his mind. “Last night when it was time for bed, Spencer lost it. He wanted Mom to do his bedtime routine with him. We kept trying to explain that she was gone and he kept shouting that he already knew his mom had been stabbed to death, but he didn’t seem to get that Mom, our mom, was also… anyways, there was a lot of leg hitting and hair pulling, and Desiree changed her mind about the whole FBI investigation thing after that hour long fiasco.”

“The last thing I wanted was for the team to be here investigating. The only reason I’m for it is because Spencer’s got repressed trauma and the more we know about what happened, the better we can help him.”

“I get it, I promise I do,” Sarah said. “And Desiree does, too, now. Clean yourself up and then come downstairs and talk to her. Plus, we just started making coffee and breakfast.”

By the time Derek made it downstairs, the Morgan kitchen was in full swing. Spencer sat at the table with a large mug of coffee and a bowl of sugar beside him. Sarah and Desiree were bickering as always, but playfully, whirling around each other grabbing plates, stirring pots, opening the fridge and cupboards. Unlike the day before, the atmosphere was lighter, calmer, and, almost impossibly, happier. Before Derek could check in with Spencer, who was seemingly in the process of seeing how much sugar could be dissolved in one cup of coffee, he was intercepted by Desiree. Derek felt a surge of emotions rise up.

“Des,” he began, but she put her hand over his mouth before he could get another word out.

“I’m sorry,” she said quickly, quietly. “I just… I… you know how you said yesterday that nobody’s coping very well? Spencer screaming in the bathtub and all that? I realized… I don’t think I’m doing much better. I’m screaming at my own brother, who’s just trying to do all the right things for everybody.”

Derek pulled her into a tight hug. “Listen to me Des, there’s no such thing as doing a good job grieving. This is gonna be messy. And no matter what route we choose with the case, its not gonna be pretty. But know that there’s nothing any of us could do that could break apart this family. Our love for each other is a fact, it can’t go anywhere. Not even Mom’s love for us can ever really disappear. Got it?”

Desiree pulled away, wiping a few tears off her cheeks and nodding fervently. There was a moment of silence in the kitchen until Spencer’s voice rung out. “What case?” he asked.

“What?” Sarah asked.

“Derek said, ‘no matter what route we choose with the case, its not gonna be pretty,’” Spencer repeated back. “Do we have another case? Is there a serial killer on the loose? Should I grab my notebook?”

He stood up from the table, but Derek quickly caught his shoulder and eased him back down. “You and I don’t have a case,” Derek said carefully, “but the team does. That’s why they’re in Chicago.” He took a long look at Desiree, who didn’t look thrilled, but nodded her consent.

One by one, each of the siblings took seats around the table. Spencer didn’t seem to notice the gravity of the conversation or the way the atmosphere in the kitchen had shifted.

“They’re working on a cold case, very few leads, the murders of several women in the area back in the 80’s and early 90’s,” Derek said.

“Any witnesses?” Spencer asked.

Desiree looked like she was going to throw up.

“We – they – aren’t sure. There might be one, but the interview would be tricky,” he said.

“How exactly would that work?” Desiree asked.

Derek was grateful for the thousandth time that week for being able to talk about Spencer right in front of him. “Sometimes when we interview witnesses to crimes and we don’t believe they are emotionally equipped to handle reliving the trauma, we ask them to tell us a story or draw a picture as an entry point. In cases where we feel the victim is both emotionally unequipped and also doesn’t understand that they are a victim, we tell them a story about someone else and see if there are any parts that elicit an emotional response.”

“And you think that’ll work for S… someone not so in touch with their emotions?” Desiree asked.

“Or unable to understand abstract concepts?” Sarah added.

“It’s the best tool we’ve got,” Derek said. “The last thing we want to do is revictimize anyone.”

“Revictimize,” Spencer repeated. “To victimize again. But the witness wasn’t a victim, they were a witness. So how can you revictimize someone who wasn’t a victim in the first place?”

“Sometimes witnesses can end up just as traumatized as the actual targets of the crimes,” Derek explained.

“Then the witness is a victim of the unsub, too,” Spencer pointed out. “You have to interview them, then, no matter how hard it is. It’ll help catch the unsub.”

“And help the witness heal from the trauma,” Sarah added gently.

Suddenly Desiree let out a laugh. “You know what Mom would say right now? _When you have the good life, fight to keep it_. God knows she fought hard enough to make sure his life was good. She would have been lacing up her boxing gloves to get through this fight, ready to punch her way through ‘til her baby was okay again.”

 

* * *

 

 

“Sir?”

“Yes?”

“I’d like to formally request a raise. A gigantic raise. A raise worthy of the supreme intelligence and awesomeness that I alone –.”

“Garcia,” Hotch interrupted. “What do you have?”

“I can’t usually see your steely glare of death over the phone, and I’ve never been more grateful for that fact,” Garcia said, refocusing from her self-celebratory speech. “So the whole ‘April 12thdeath-iversary thing’ was a bust because its likely Victim #4’s family didn’t know that April 12thwas a significant date to begin with. So nothing to commemorate. But the ME’s report did contain this little tidbit – a crazy mix of drugs in her system: succinylcholine, atropine, glycopyrrolate, methohexial, ketamine, valproic acid, and lurasidone.”

Emily made a face. “That’s… anti-depressants? And sedatives?”

“More specifically, a mix of drugs you’d get if you were undergoing electroshock therapy or ECT and then ongoing treatment for mental illness, which are both therapies that women living on the street don’t tend to have. So I looked up medical records for women 20-30 years old in Chicago who had ECT just prior to April 12th. It’s a short list, and wouldn’t you know, one of those names matches a missing persons report filed on April 19th, 1990.”

Garcia hit a button on her keyboard and on the screen popped a picture of a vibrant, young blonde, her toothy smile and bright red lipstick standing out in a background of soft Christmas lights and snow.

“Meet Andrea Maher,” Garcia said. “Parents reported her missing five days after her body was found but it was a different precinct and a different era. Nobody connected the dots. Parents said they waited five days because this was standard operating procedure for Andrea with her illness. Her missing persons report states she had paranoid schizophrenia and ran from her home after the ECT treatment. She thought her parents were trying to kill her..”

Emily shrugged. “ECT isn’t like it used to be, but to a paranoid schizophrenic? That must have been terrifying. She was probably disoriented, in pain, scared, disassociated from reality. Talk about an easy target for our Unsub.”

“Did she have a kid?” Gideon asked.

“She did get pre-natal care in 1976 but no record of birth or abortion,” Garcia reported.

“That would make Spencer about 4 years older than they thought. Mistaking a 13-year-old for a 9-year-old is a pretty big mistake to make,” Emily said.

“Not if that kid is malnourished and non verbal,” Hotch countered.

“JJ, call Andrea’s parents. See if there was a son. Garcia, we need Spencer’s CPS file,” Gideon said. Garcia opened her mouth to protest, but he cut her off. “Get it from Morgan if it makes you feel better, but get it. And keep working on identifying the third victim. More we can find out about victimology the better.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Spencer sat in his bedroom cross-legged on the bed, several of his favorite textbooks laid out in front of him. Breakfast had already been out of the routine – he was supposed to shower first, then get dressed, then breakfast. Instead Desiree had told him that since he had showered the afternoon before he didn’t need to shower in the morning, which was just _ridiculous_ because what else was he supposed to do before getting dressed? Then Desiree had told him that the coffee was ready and didn’t he want to drink it while it was fresh… so he drank coffee in his pajamas, but that meant he hadn’t spent any time in the bathroom yet. And that made his whole body ache and tingle until all he could feel was the pressure on his bladder and when Desiree asked if he could tell them what was wrong, he realized he was biting his forearm and oh my god did that pain feel good to focus on instead of his on-fire body and if he could just make his body _quiet_ for two seconds maybe he could find the words to tell his sister that _he was supposed to shower first, then get dressed, and then eat breakfast_.

Derek knocked lightly on the door frame. “Can I come in?”

“Can you come in?” Spencer repeated. “I’m sure you _can_.”

“Okay, may I?” Derek amended, suppressing the urge to tease his brother about being a cranky old school teacher.

Spencer didn’t answer, and Derek took it as very resigned permission. Derek tossed Spencer’s speech book and his notebook on the bed. “Found these in your bag. Thought you might want them.”

“Thought _you_ might want them,” Spencer retorted.

Derek came and sat down on the bed. “You’re right. We tried to do what we thought was best for you and in doing so messed up what you actually need. Although I have to say, I didn’t mind that it was Sarah and Desiree that messed it up this time.”

That made Spencer smile and then frown. “You’ve been fighting about where I should live now that Mom is dead and I can’t live here.”

His bluntness took Derek aback. “Yeah, that’s true,” he said. “We’re just trying to figure out what’s best.”

“For me,” Spencer said.

“Right, what’s best for you.”

“No,” Spencer said again. “Figure out for me.”

Derek sighed in understanding. “Right. We should have asked you. We’ve been making the decisions for you.” As much as he was desperate for Spencer to come back to Virginia for him, Derek knew he had to ask. “I don’t want you to answer right now. I want you to think about it. You have a few days. Both Sarah and Desiree are willing for you to live with them. And Auntie Yvonne told us you’re welcome at her house, too.”

He felt sick as he watched Spencer freeze up. “Do you want to tell me you need some time?” Derek asked, nudging his speech book closer to him. There was a page for moments like this.

Spencer grabbed the book and turned to one of the last pages, recently written in. Derek saw Gideon’s scrawled writing _“My mom passed away in a car accident,”_ and then to a page Spencer had written in.

“I’m sorry I don’t know how to take care of you yet,” Spencer read, then looked expectantly up at Derek.

Before he realized what he was doing, he had his brother in a hug, the words hitting him like a ton of bricks. They were the words the brothers had spoken to each other just a few days before in the foyer of Derek’s house surrounded by boxes of Spencer’s stuff – _I don’t know how to take care of you yet, but we’ll figure it out together_.

“When the funeral’s over, we’ll go back to Virginia. I don’t know how to live without her, man, but we’ll figure it all out together,” Derek said into Spencer’s neck, gripping him tightly. He felt Spencer’s body relax into his. They sat there like that until long after the moment would have passed for any other brothers.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

For the second day in a row, Penelope found herself in the Morgan house, but this time she sat at a table surrounded by Hotch, Derek, Desiree, and Sarah. Derek had Spencer’s CPS file in front of him, ready to hand it over to the BAU after the meeting. She pulled up a picture and turned around her laptop to face the siblings.

“Does the name Andrea Maher mean anything to you?” Hotch asked. They slowly shook their heads. “She’s victim number four, died April 12th. According to her medical records and missing persons report, she ran away from her family after they treated her paranoid schizophrenia with electroconvulsant therapy. There’s also some evidence to suggest she had a child.”

Sarah looked like someone had just slapped her. “You think this is Spencer’s birth mother?” she gasped.

“It’s a possibility,” he said. “There are some inconsistencies, JJ’s trying to make contact with the family, but they aren’t interested in talking.”

“And you said she died on April 12th?”

Suddenly, Desiree and Derek sat back in their chairs. “Oh my god,” Desiree said. “Is that a coincidence? That’s gotta be more than a coincidence, right Derek? What does that mean?”

Hotch and Garcia exchanged looks. “Sorry, are we missing something?” Hotch asked.

Derek rubbed his face. “April 12this Spencer’s birthday. Which was… god damn it. Damn it!”

“Last week,” Garcia finished quietly. She reached for Derek’s hand but he pulled it away, too upset to be comforted.

“I don’t mean to sound callous, but you’re hardly the first adult siblings in history to forget each other’s birthdays,” Hotch said.

“Yeah but that’s what we told him to get him to go to Virgina in the first place. It was a birthday trip. I told him… damn it. I told him our Mom died _on his birthday_.”

There was a moment of silence before Hotch asked, “How do you know Spencer’s birthday?”

The three Morgan kids looked at each other. “I… I don’t know,” Sarah said, taken off guard. “I guess I never gave it any thought.”

Derek opened up a manila folder he had brought down from his mother’s filing cabinet. _CPS RECORD_ was written across the tab in Fran’s blocky handwriting.

“Call received April 12, 1990 at 2:27pm at Cook County Child and Family Services re: report of abandoned minor, location: Flexon Food and Fuel,” Derek read. “Report made by Flexon employee Maria Alvarez who stated that she noticed minor waiting outside of the convenience store for an extended period of time, approximately 15 minutes, before calling 911. CPD responded to the call, minor taken to Cook County General for medical treatment. CFS assumed care of minor at the hospital at approximately 3:45pm.” Derek shuffled a few papers. “The hospital discharge paperwork just says that Spencer had a few shallow cuts on his arms and abdomen dressed, and then left with CFS workers.”

“God,” Sarah whispered. “So his birthday is, what, the date he was found? The date his mom was murdered? The date that the sicko that stabbed her decided to cut him up, too? That’s what we’ve been celebrating this whole time?” Sarah gripped Desiree’s hand hard. Derek looked ready to punch something.

“I have a question,” Garcia said. “Not to make things worse… but if this Maria lady was the one to make the call and didn’t know him, and Spencer was non-verbal the whole time even long after he came to live with you… then how…”

“How do we know his name is Spencer?” Derek finished.

There was a moment of silence before Derek stood up and walked out the door.

 


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 14: Thank you for all the comments and the love! This is the longest chapter yet. Enjoy:)

_I know you need to cool down. Take all the time you need, but we’ve got to plan the thing sometime today considering its this weekend. So just check in when you get back so we can all talk <3 SM_

The thing, Derek had to laugh. _Oh you mean the funeral for Mom?_ He wanted to text back. But instead he shot off a quick “ _thanks, be back soon”_ and took a right turn in a block that would slowly turn him closer to home.

It was too overwhelming. Not only had they forgotten Spencer’s birthday in epic fashion, but what they thought was his birthday was actually the date he had been abandoned. He couldn’t be sure, but it seemed like something his mom would do, turning that a horrible moment like that into something positive. If he could ask her about it now, she’d probably tell him about how life is never all good or all bad, every end to something is the beginning of another. Spencer’s old life ended so that his new life, a better life, could begin, and that was something worth celebrating. She used to say that Spencer had always been a Morgan, but God had brought him to the family on the scenic route. He wondered what she would do if she knew just how scenic that route had been.

Then Derek realized with a jolt that she must have known _something_ was wrong. He had clearly been abused, even a self-absorbed teenage Derek had understood that. And he found it impossible to believe that she had never tried to give him a bath before and seen what a fiasco that could be. Had Spencer really never mentioned his birth mom before around her? Never had a flash back about stabbings? He knew his mom had highly encouraged Spencer to get his psychology degree to help Spencer understand others. If she knew more about his past than she had shared with his siblings, maybe she had actually been trying to help him understand himself.

Derek chuckled. “Mom, you are something else,” he said aloud. “Now you just gotta tell us how to get Spencer through the next few days and back to Virginia in one piece.” It wasn’t lost on him that he wasn’t nervous about post-move life anymore. It was a complete unknown, sure, but gone were the worries of not knowing how to take care of his brother. If the past week had taught him anything, it was that life with Spencer was infinitely better than life without, and Derek needed Spencer’s help just as much as Spencer needed Derek’s. _I don’t know how to take care of you yet, but we’ll figure it out together._

As he walked up to the house, he realized the black SUV was gone. Hotch and Garcia must have gone back to the CPD station. He shot off another quick text to Garcia to let her know he was okay and hardly had time to put his phone back in his pocket before she replied with a series of very relieved looking selfies full of duck lips and peace signs.

“Hey,” Derek called out as he opened the front door. He heard a muffled reply come from the vague direction of his mom’s room upstairs and made his way up. The scene that greeted him was a chaos of papers strewn about the room with his sisters sitting in the eye of the storm and Spencer reading a book in the corner, flying through a page a second.

“Mom. Kept. Everything,” Desiree said in way of greeting, gesturing to the overwhelming amount of papers surrounding her. In the corner, all four drawers of the grey filing cabinet were open and in various stages of empty. “Your friends took the CPS file and said that they would try to find that Maria Alvarez lady. Something tells me that there’s never been someone Penelope couldn’t find, which she kinda scares me by the way.” Derek could only laugh in agreement. “But we got curious to see if Mom had anything that would explain how we knew his name was Spencer.”

“And?”

“Nothing, really. Just notes from every single doctor and therapy appointment. Every single school paper. And not just the IEPs. Like, every single assignment.”

“Anyone else feeling like Mom maybe had a favorite child?” Sarah joked.

“Yeah, where’s my filing cabinet?” Desiree said.

“You gotta do something filing cabinet worthy for that,” Derek teased, lightly pushing his sister.

Sarah cleared her throat. “Spencer continues to show progress with speech therapy, primarily using echolalia to communicate his wants and needs,” she read. “Guardian requested continued services at South Cook Community College.” She opened the next folder in her stack. “This is just a bunch of documented disability forms from SCCC’s student resource center. All the semesters he had to be exempted from public speaking.”

“I remember that,” Derek said. “The student resource center fights. She always thought Spencer could do speeches and presentations with some help. They were more interested in documenting it as a disability and letting him off the hook instead of helping him with speech therapy. She was so mad they wouldn’t give him the chance.”

“Speaking of public speaking,” Sarah said. “We’ve seriously got to figure out who’s doing what at the service. Aunt Yvonne has most of it planned with Reverend Howe. She said we just need to figure out who’s giving the eulogy and how we want to handle the rest of the speeches. You know, planned, open mic, whatever.”

Desiree shrugged. “I guess I assumed you’d do the eulogy, Derek,” she said. “Seems like one of those ‘oldest male child’ things.”

“That’s not very feminist of you,” he teased lightly. “I’ll do it though. Of course I’ll do it.”

“I’ll do it,” they heard from the corner. They looked up to see Spencer with his head still in his book but the pages no longer turning.

Desiree looked from brother to brother. “Are you repeating words or do you mean you want to…”

Spencer looked up. “Do you mean you want to give the eulogy,” he said.

Derek opened his mouth but found he had no idea what to say. “Look,” he finally said, “I know we were just talking about… but Spencer, you don’t have to prove anything. Its gonna be a stressful day, man, and I know you’d feel so bad if you had a meltdown.”

As if on cue, Spencer brought his hand up to strike his leg in frustration but suddenly showed an unusual display of restraint as he changed course, as if to prove a point. Instead, he grabbed his speech book from the table next to him and opened it to the first page. “ _Spencer's Eleventh Speech Book. Here's to empty pages staying empty. Love, Mom_ ,” he read aloud, then looked to Derek as if that explained everything.

“I… I don’t understand. Can you try a different page?” Derek asked.

Spencer pursed his lips and all three siblings simultaneously bit back their urge to tell him to stop it with the bad lips. 

“Okay. You want to give the eulogy because… you have things you want to say about Mom? Because you want to help us out?” Derek tried, hoping he could guess correctly to supply Spencer with the right words. But he didn’t repeat anything. Instead, he dug his nails into his forearm. “Because you want to prove to her you can do it?”

That seemed to get close. “Prove to her you can do it,” Spencer repeated, but his nails didn’t leave his skin. “She always thought Spencer could do speeches and presentations. She was so mad they wouldn’t give him the chance.”

Suddenly Derek understood. “You want to honor her and how she fought for you by delivering the eulogy,” he said, unable to stop the tears from spilling down his cheeks.

“Honor her,” Spencer said, relief evident at finding the right words.

“Its not going to be easy,” Derek cautioned. “But…” he looked at Sarah and Desiree’s faces, both clearly nervous but the tears in their eyes conveying their agreement, “I can’t think of anything more fitting to honor Mom.”

Sarah got a sly smile on her face. “So, Spencer… what do you know about eulogies?”

An excitement overtook Spencer, his face lighting up. “Eulogy – a mid 15thcentury word meaning praise, good or fine language, from _eu_ meaning “well” and _logia_ meaning “speaking. Early Greek scholars would inscribe these words on tombs…”

“So obviously, we’re doing this, but are we seriously letting him do this?” Desiree asked, her voice low, as Spencer enthusiastically continued on with his lecture.

“He’s clearly capable of writing it,” Sarah joked, gesturing to the body of proof in the academic papers all around them, “and Aunt Yvonne can help him with the details even we don’t know about Mom’s childhood. As for delivery…”

“He could get up there and tell them all that Mom was stabbed, or have a flash back to some other horror in his childhood,” Desiree said. “This could be the worst idea ever. Like what if he has a total meltdown? Will he be even more traumatized?”

“A meltdown at the funeral would be more traumatizing for us than him,” Derek said. “But I think we’re all willing to risk it, right?”

Spencer continued to lecture on about eulogies as Sarah, Desiree, and Derek sat resignedly amidst the chaos of the room. “If it’s traumatizing for us, so be it,” Sarah finally said. “Mom tried to open every door she could for him. Just him wanting to do this would have meant everything to her. He’ll honor her by giving the eulogy. We’ll honor her by giving him the chance to.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

Maria Alvarez was an older woman who probably would have been near retirement age when she called 911 in 1990. She clutched her purse close to her as she waited behind the heavy wooden table in the CPD conference room.

“That’s Maria?” Emily asked with Garcia in tow, joining JJ who was standing at a partially obscured window watching the woman.

“Yeah, Gideon wants a forensic interview,” JJ answered.

“To see if she knows anything about Spencer?” Garcia asked.

“To see if maybe she can remember any details on the Unsub. The current working theory is Spencer was brought to the gas station by the Unsub, he’s hoping a forensic interview might help,” JJ said.

“But its been such a long time,” Garcia said.

“You’d be surprised the kind of details we’ve gotten from these interviews, even after decades,” Emily said. “And even when the memory isn’t perfect, it sometimes gives us a lead we didn’t have before.”

Garcia sighed. “I know Gideon just wants to catch an Unsub, but all I want to do is help our new baby boy.” All three looked toward their boss who was tipping back in his chair, reading a file.

“I don’t know… Gideon has a heart in there somewhere,” JJ said. “He gets tunnel visioned to the extreme, sure, but he’s who I would want on the case if it was my brother’s sanity on the line.”

As if on cue, she heard Gideon call her name from across the station.

“He doesn’t have super sonic hearing, does he?” she questioned.

“If he did, we’d all have been fired by now,” Emily teased. Garcia gave a fake look of panic before turning around and scuttling across the station in her candy red high heels.

Emily and JJ entered the room. Maria looked up nervously. “I already told you on the phone, I wish I had more information, but I don’t,” she said as soon as the two agents walked in.

They both sat down, putting a manila folder between them and Maria. “Well we appreciate you taking the time to come in,” Emily said. “We know it was a long time ago and honestly, not even the kind of thing someone would remember at all. I would imagine a gas station in south Chicago saw a fair amount of 911 calls.”

“Unfortunately,” Maria said. “But I do remember. I remember. Skinny little kid lookin’ like he was waiting for who knows what. Didn’t know him, didn’t talk to him. Kept my eye on him ‘til I realized nobody was comin’ for him. Called 911. They came and picked him up.”

“Ms. Alvarez, we were hoping you could look at these pictures, see if maybe you remember seeing either of these women that day.” Emily opened up the folder and slid over pictures of Andrea Maher and Diana Reid.

She hardly glanced down. “No, sorry, they don’t. I hardly remember the kid, much less random customers that came in that day.”

“If it’d be okay with you, we’d like to take you through that day, see if talking through it helps you remember anything. We call it a forensic interview,” Emily said.

“No,” she said again. “It’s a waste of time, I’m sorry. It was so long ago. You think I put much thought into the customers that came through the Flexon?” She stood up from the table and slung her purse on her shoulder. “I can’t help you, I’m sorry.”

Emily and JJ stood up, too. “You’ll call us if you remember anything?” Emily asked. Maria gave a polite smile and a small noise of agreement, then made a quick exit out the door.

“She clearly remembers something,” Emily said as soon as Maria was out of the room. “She was defensive when we implied that she might have forgotten about Spencer, but then immediately pretended like she didn’t remember anything. She couldn’t even sit down at the same table with us.”

“And she hardly looked at the pictures of Andrea and Diana,” JJ added. “She clearly recognized one of them.”

“Lets go update the boss,” Emily said, grabbing the folder. They walked into the bullpen and joined Hotch, Gideon, and Garcia near the white board containing the pictures and timeline. “She denied knowing anything but she’s clearly hiding something. Not sure what though,” she told the team.

“Garcia was just about to update us on what she’s found on Diana Reid,” Hotch said.

“Unfortunately, nothing new,” she said. “The woman’s kind of a ghost. And a pre-internet ghost which is the worst kind. But its like she went out of the way to stay off the grid as an adult. We know she grew up in Las Vegas. Graduated from U of N Reno and then moved back to Las Vegas to teach English Literature at a high school, then at U of N Las Vegas. Lost her job when she was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. Committed once. Fell off the grid for a few years, probably because of the paranoid part of the paranoid schizophrenia, until her DNA matched with the blood on the piece of wood found next to Andrea Maher’s body.”

“Family?”

“Just parents. No siblings, no records of marriage, divorce, birth certificates, or medical records outside of her commitment at Sunrise Medical Center.”

“You said both Andrea Maher and Diana Reid had paranoid schizophrenia?” Emily questioned. “That effects less than 1% of the population. Quite a coincidence.”

“Maybe by killing Andrea, Diana was trying to kill the part of herself she hated,” JJ speculated. “We already profiled that this was a crime of opportunity because of the timeline. She wasn’t going out hunting. If she was specifically looking for someone with paranoid schizophrenia, I mean, she couldn’t have hunted for something so specific. But when the opportunity came by…”

“Any indication that our first two known victims had mental health issues?” Hotch asked Garcia.

She did a quick search on her laptop. “Victim #1 was being treated for depression, but doesn’t look too severe. Nothing’s coming up for Victim #2. Victim #3 is still unidentified, though obviously don’t have to tell you that.”

The team stared at the board in silence. “Is there a chance that we have this wrong? That the victims aren’t related? I mean, there is the difference in wound marks on the neck of the fourth victim. Maybe we were wrong in connecting these four murders. Someone else killed the first three and Diana killed the fourth.” Emily asked. “Spencer saw Diana stab his mom, she turns on him after she’s done with Andrea, he gets away and runs to the gas station?”

“We also profiled that the Unsub might have kept someone with them to release their sadist urges on between victims,” Hotch said. “Based on the level of PTSD Spencer’s displaying and the fact that Andrea lived on and off in a well to do home, she couldn’t have given birth to and abused a child without a significant paperwork trail.”

“Unless that’s why Mr. and Mrs. Maher still haven’t called me back, because they’re hiding that little fact,” JJ countered.

“Is it possible Diana killed all four, and Spencer was the child of one of the first three victims? She kept him and it wasn’t until Andrea he was able to get away?” Emily asked. Suddenly she looked like she was going to throw up. “God, how could someone kidnap and torture a little boy like that?”

“Are you really surprised with this job?” JJ retorted.

“Surprised, no. But I hope I never stop being revolted by it.”

Gideon walked up to the board and took a deep look at the pictures on the board. “We’re missing something. Too many theories, not enough proof. What’s the timeline when we add Spencer in?”

Garcia opened up the CPS file she had gotten from Derek. “Andrea Maher’s body was called in at 11:30am. ME put time of death around 11:00am. Maria Alvarez called 911 for Spencer at 2:27pm and she said he had been there about 15 minutes.”

“So it takes nearly three hours for Spencer to get from the crime scene to the gas station a few blocks away?” JJ questioned. “He’s not your average kid playing at a park for three hours. Someone would have noticed him and called 911 way before Maria did.”

“I’ll call Derek,” Hotch said. “We’re out of leads. Its time to interview Spencer.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

An hour later, the Morgan family pulled up to the police station – four adults piled into Sarah’s small sedan. Hotch had called Derek, his voice serious but sympathetic. _“I know what I’m asking from Spencer. If I could have spared Jack from the same, I would have. And I tried for Spencer. But we’re out of options._ ”

The processional into the station was as somber as a funeral march with one exception – Spencer was practically straining against his sister’s hands to get inside. Hotch had told him he was being brought in as a consultant on a new case, just like in Loring, and Spencer’s joy couldn’t be contained.

His exuberance caught the eye of a woman sitting across the street on a park bench. Maria Alvarez had marched out of the police station carried by adrenaline and fear and ended up across the street, staring at the front door, willing one of the FBI agents to come out, to question her, to tell her that they knew she was scared but it was safe to tell the truth now. Her silent begging hadn’t been answered in the last hour until now – but not by an agent coming out, but a skinny kid unfolding himself from the backseat of a sedan and racing to get inside. He was flanked by three other adults, two women holding his hands, and a man who in any other situation Maria would have found terrifying (or terrifyingly attractive) – but right now looked more like a prowling, protective wolf watching the kid’s back.

“Oh my god,” she whispered. “Spencer.”


	15. Chapter 15

Spencer was practically bouncing on his toes doing his best to wait patiently in the police station’s interview room. Derek, Desiree, and Sarah watched him through a side window. The room was set up more like a living room than anything else. It was the kind of room where JJ might tell terrified parents that their child had been found dead, or Emily might have conducted a forensic interview with a still trembling rape victim.

Or where Gideon might tell a trauma victim a story about the murders of four young women while the rest of the team watched behind a one-way mirror for micro expressions and subtle shifts in behavior. Derek supposed if there was one very thin silver lining to Spencer’s reactions, it was that Spencer didn’t do anything subtly. Gideon wasn’t going to have to worry about Spencer hiding his reactions or the team missing a micro-expression.

“Gideon’s really the best?” Desiree asked quietly, for what felt like the hundredth time that hour.

Derek nodded again. “He won’t do anything to jeopardize the case,” he said.

“Yeah, that answer doesn’t make me feel any better,” Sarah said. “I don’t give a damn about the case.”

“Closing the case _is_ closure for Spencer,” Derek reminded her.

“I know, but… maybe I’ve seen too many episodes of Law and Order,” she said nervously. “Too much yelling and tactics and good cop, bad cop.”

“Spencer isn’t being accused of anything,” Derek reminded her. “The only tactic being used is the interviewing style.” But deep down he couldn’t ignore the gnawing feeling that Gideon might press too hard and hurt his brother in a quest to get information about the Unsub. He trusted his boss with his life… but he could be a real dick sometimes.

So when he saw JJ walk into the room with Gideon, he felt himself let go of a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding in. They took up one of the couches and Spencer immediately came over and sat on the couch opposite them. A low coffee table was set in the middle. Spencer took out his thick notebook, the same one Derek had given him during his first BAU trip. JJ took the opportunity to grab the glass water pitcher and glasses on the table and set them on the floor by her feet. Derek wanted to be offended on behalf of his brother, but he had to admit – if things went south, the last thing he wanted was for his brother to be near breakable glass. He felt Desiree’s hand slide into his left and Sarah’s on the right. He squeezed them tightly.

“Hey Spence,” JJ began. Derek had to smile at the nickname she had taken to calling him.

“Thanks for coming in to help us,” Gideon said. “Your profiling instincts helped catch the Unsub in Loring last week and we’re hoping you can help us again. We’ve hit a dead end with the case we’re working here.”

Derek huffed in surprise behind the glass. “That was just last week?” he asked to no one in particular.

“Last week feels like so long ago I forgot I was still pissed at you about the whole Loring thing,” Desiree teased, squeezing his hand.

Gideon put a manila folder on the table but instead of opening it fully or even just sliding it over in its entirety like they would do for other consultants, Gideon cracked it open just enough to pull out the top photograph. It was of a beautiful brunette, _Victim #1_ , Derek recalled vaguely. The last time he had seen the pictures was on the jet.

“Jessica Martinson, killed September 9, 1987,” Gideon began. Spencer looked at the photo with great interest, but there wasn’t anything that made them think she looked familiar to him. “Prostitute, in and out of rehab where she was being treated for a cocaine addiction and depression. Her throat was slashed.”

“Any evidence of post mortem wounds or ligature marks?” Spencer asked. He grabbed his pen and started making comments in his notebook.

“Evidence of pre and post mortem wounds,” Gideon said. “Which made us think it was the work of a sexual sadist.”

“A sexual sadist,” Spencer repeated. “The DSM-V defines it as ‘recurrent and intense sexual arousal from the physical or psychological suffering of another person, as manifested by fantasies, urges, or behaviors.’ Consent is irrelevant to the diagnosis. What you’re referencing is actually ‘paraphillic coercive disorder’ which is a form of sexual sadism wherein the act must be non-consensual. And considering Jessica Martinson is dead, we can conclude she didn’t consent.”

Gideon almost chuckled. “Got me there,” he said. He pulled out the second picture from the stack and slid it over to Spencer. “The next victim, Alexandra Pearson, died October 12, 1988. If our Unsub has or had Paraphillic Coercive Disorder, a cooling off period of 13 months would be highly unusual. There would be a need to release his sexual and sadistic urges out on another victim in the interim. The Unsub likely abused someone vulnerable living under the same roof. Possibly a child.”

Spencer wrote the second victim’s name and date of death in his notebook. “Its likely it was a child or a someone else who felt forced to stay with him,” he commented. “Someone easily overpowered who likely felt that they had no other recourse for survival but to stay with the Unsub.”

The entire team seemed to draw in a simultaneous breath.

“Is he talking about himself?” Desiree whispered outside the room.

“I don’t know,” Derek answered, but his gut was screaming _yes, yes, yes_. He couldn’t see the rest of the team from their vantage point in the observation room, but he knew Hotch and Emily were thinking the same thing. JJ and Gideon certainly were.

“How do you think an Unsub might have taken their urges out on a surrogate?” Gideon asked, pulling on the thread lightly.

Spencer looked up from his notebook and gave Gideon a snarky look that could only be interpreted as, _Do I have to spell this out for you? I thought you were a profiler._

“The Unsub was likely consistent with their MO and weapon of choice whether they were killing their victims or torturing the surrogate.” He pointed to Alexandra Pearson’s throat. “Slashed with a knife.” He pointed to a few more pointed marks on her abdomen. “Stabbed, stabbed, stabbed,” he said, putting a finger on each one. With each word, his voice rose in pitch.

“Derek,” Desiree exhaled, gripping her brother’s hand tighter. “That’s what he said with me the other day while you were sleeping. _Stab, stab, stab_ …”

“I know,” he said, his jaw working to keep his emotions from overflowing.

“Is that his mom? Victim number 2?”

“Nothing in his expression showed he recognized her when he saw her picture,” Derek said. He was trying to ground himself as much as his sister. “There was no evidence that Victim 2 had a child. And Spencer’s never been stabbed. There would be scars. I’ve seen these victims before, there’s no forensic evidence on Spencer’s body.”

“Yeah, but look at him – he’s getting upset now.”

It was true – the hand not holding his pen was starting to do its telltale dance. Fist clenching and unclenching in rhythm, pressing into the flesh of his thigh, like the valve of a tea kettle trying to contain the building pressure inside. Gideon pulled out the picture of the third victim, the unknown Jane Doe, and slid it over to Spencer. He could feel Sarah and Desiree’s stares on him and he gave a little shake of the head. “He doesn’t recognize her either,” he said. “Damn, that one was probably our best chance.”

“Why?” Sarah asked. And then she answered her own question. “Oh, right. The jury’s still out on if Victim #4 actually had a kid. We didn’t know anything about Victim #3.”

Spencer was still agitated though. Gideon was clearly hitting some kind of nerve. “What kind of knife do you think would make stab wounds like that?” he asked. He pointed to the wounds on Victim #3’s abdomen, the same wounds as were on the first two, he closest thing to a signature they had from the Unsub.

Spencer dug his fingernails into his thigh. “What kind of knife?” He repeated. “Was it a… it was… a, uh…”

JJ reached across the low table and gently took his hands in hers. “What kind of knife was it?” she asked again.

Spencer flinched back but she held onto his hands. Derek was reminded of how good a mother and an agent JJ was. Her firm yet gentle touch brought him back to the hotel room a week earlier when she had helped get Spencer through his evening routine on that disastrous night in Loring.

“Was it… a black knife?” Spencer said quietly. “With pearls on the handle?”

JJ rubbed her thumbs firmly on the back of his hands, trying to give him the security he was so desperately craving. “Who owned the black knife with pearls on the handle?” she asked.

Spencer’s wide eyes darted around the room and then he yanked his hands out of her grasp and bit down hard on his fingers as he flew across the room. Before JJ could react, Spencer had backed up into a corner, hitting his body hard against the wall, and then slid down. With one hand still clenched tightly between his teeth, he threw his head back against the wall – _thump, thump, thump_ , again and again and again.

Derek flew into the room before he could think, making it to Spencer before JJ or Gideon had even been able to stand up off the couch. “Spencer,” he said firmly. “I’m here, man, I’m here. I’m gonna put my hand behind your head so you don’t hurt yourself.” Between backward strikes, Derek positioned his hand between his brother’s head and the wall. The strikes were painful, but Derek didn’t register it. Gideon crouched down next to them, two downturned picture in his hand. “Get out of here,” Derek said angrily, but Gideon didn’t move.

“We’re so close, Derek. This is the best move. He knows.”

“Like hell am I going to let you show him those pictures,” Derek said. “Catching the Unsub can wait a day. I’m not pushing him over the brink.”

“It won’t do that, I wouldn’t do that,” Gideon said. “Derek, you have to trust me. If Spencer can tell us what he knows now, we never have to go through this again. Let me ask him. For his sake.”

Derek looked to his brother, eyes wide in fear, still rocking back and forth, though the strikes had slowly become less violent Derek suddenly realized. He looked to his sisters, both standing helplessly in the doorway. They looked back at him, completely horrified and utterly clueless. It was, Derek realized, completely his call.

No – not his call. Spencer’s call. Derek took a deep breath.

Slowly, he moved his hand from the wall to rocking with his brother’s head, then firmly brought Spencer’s head to his shoulder. Spencer buried his face into Derek’s chest as he brought his skinny arms around himself. Derek pulled him into a tight embrace and rocked him lightly back and forth.

Derek brought his mouth close to Spencer’s ear. “My whole life I’ve called you ‘kid,’” Derek whispered. “Even when you came to live with me, I thought I’d be taking care of you. But this week, I’ve realized you aren’t my kid brother anymore. You’ve been the one taking care of me. Knowing you want to come back to Virginia with me… it’s the only thing holding me together. You’re an adult. And you can decide. Do you want to finish talking to Agent Gideon?”

For a minute nobody moved except the pair of brothers, slowly rocking together. Then slowly, painfully slowly, Spencer moved and pointed to the pictures in Gideon’s grasp. “Do you want to finish,” he repeated.

Nobody moved from their places as Gideon nodded and extended his hand with one of the pictures in it. He flipped it over to reveal Andrea Maher. After seeing the other three victims’ pictures up close, the stab wounds on her neck looked startlingly different than the slash marks across the other three’s.

“Her name is Andrea Maher. Do you know her?” Gideon asked, all pretenses of narrative story telling and consulting out the window.

“Know her,” he repeated and by the look on his face there was no doubt about it. He traced his finger across her neck and tapped it a few times along the stab wounds, then repeated his now-familiar mantra. “Stabbed, stabbed, stabbed.”

“Spencer…” Derek said thickly. “Is this your mom?”

“Mom,” Spencer repeated.

Derek looked to Gideon and JJ, then his sisters. “Spencer… are you repeating words or are you saying this is your mom?”

Spencer shook his head. “Mom. Stabbed.”

“I…” Derek faded off, not sure what his brother meant. “Spencer, is Andrea your mom?”

“Mom stabbed,” Spencer said again, tapping the picture with a finality. That was apparently as clear of communication as Spencer was capable of.

Gideon handed the picture to JJ. “What about this person?” he asked, flipping over the final picture in the series.

Diana Reid stared back at them, feathered hair, professional outfit.

Spencer looked at the picture and extended his hand, gingerly touching the woman’s face. He traced her cheek, a small hum escaping his lips.

“Her name is Diana Reid,” JJ said. “She was an English professor; we don’t know much about her other than that.”

“Diana,” Spencer repeated. His moved his finger along her feathered hair, following her features.

“Have you met her before?” JJ asked. Clearly something about the picture was entrancing him. Spencer didn’t answer. “Did…,” JJ tapped the picture of Diana. “Did Diana stab Andrea?”

That seemed to get Spencer’s attention and he looked up at JJ with wide, almost feral, eyes. “Did Diana stab Andrea?” he repeated. “You better do it. God damn it Diana, do it. Stab her or I’ll kill him. Diana!” Spencer’s hand shot out as he hit Andrea’s photo violently over and over again. Derek grabbed both of Spencer’s skinny arms and wrapped around his brother again in a tight squeeze. “I’ll kill him!” Spencer shouted, starting to buck against Derek’s strength. “God damn it, Diana!” he screamed.

Spencer wormed his way out of Derek’s grasp and shot up off the floor, but Gideon was faster than Spencer this time. He shrieked as Gideon grabbed him in his arms, holding him strongly from behind. Spencer bucked back, trying to head butt Gideon, desperately attempting to break out of his grasp. He managed to sink his teeth into his own arm, his sleeve stifiling his scream.

“Spence,” JJ said firmly. “Its okay to be upset, but not to hurt yourself.”

But either Spencer didn’t seem to hear her, or didn’t care, or was unable to stop himself. He reared back one more time as Gideon held him firmly, managing to hit Gideon squarely in the jaw with the back of his head, and then just as quickly as he’d escalated, he slumped down into Gideon’s arms.

For the second time in two weeks, Spencer fainted. The room itself seemed to breathe a sigh of relief.

“There we go, son,” Gideon said comfortingly, half carrying half dragging Spencer back to the couch. “Its okay, just take a rest for a while.” JJ helped situate a pillow behind his head and straighten out his long legs over the edge of the couch. She smoothed his long hair away from his face.

“Derek, are you okay?” she asked.

Derek hadn’t moved from his spot on the ground, pictures discarded on the ground where Spencer had been moments before.

“Derek… Derek, hey –.”

Derek angrily sprung up from the ground and stalked out of the room through both of his sisters framing the doorway and over to the white boards the team had set up with timelines and pictures. He stared at the women’s faces for a second, at the picture of Diana Reid, the picture of 9-year-old Spencer taken at the hospital the day he had been found – and then he slammed his open palm into the board, sending it flying a few feet across the room until it smashed with a loud clatter into the wall.

“What the hell?” Sarah shouted, coming over and grabbing Derek’s arm in a futile effort to ground her much larger brother. She could feel the righteous anger flowing off of him in waves.

The police station stilled for a moment at the scene, deathly quiet, all eyes on Derek, and then on the hallway as Penelope threw open the observation room door, letting it slam noisily against the wall, and ran out into the bullpen. Hotch followed her out.

“He was a kid!” Derek shouted. “A vulnerable little kid! With no way to protect himself.” He pointed emphatically to the picture of the little boy on the board as if to justify his anger.

“You have every right to be upset,” Hotch said. “But right here, right now, being upset, its not going to help Spencer. You want to help him? Help us figure out what we’re missing.”

“ _Mom stabbed_ ,” Derek repeated Spencer’s words bitterly. “He wasn’t saying Diana stabbed his mom. He was saying that _his mom is Diana. The Unsub_. And what the hell does ‘stab her or I’ll kill him’ mean?

“Stab Andrea or I’ll kill Spencer?” JJ asked.

“We profiled that the fourth victim’s wounds indicated that the mindset of the Unsub had changed after the first three murders. Maybe it was a different Unsub altogether?” Hotch added.

“Stab wounds on Andrea’s neck instead of a clean slash across the throat indicate that whoever performed the murder had no idea what they were doing. Diana Reid never fit the profile of the Unsub – maybe she was forced to perform the last murder under duress,” Gideon said.

Sarah asked the question on everyone’s minds. “So… who the hell is the Unsub?”

A small but sure voice sounded from across the station. Maria Alvarez stood behind the counter, clutching her handbag to her chest. “I think I know the answer to that.”

 


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Who's ready for some answers in the case??

“I’ve held onto a lot of secrets in my life, but this one… I thought I’d go to my grave with this one. Especially after so long. But then I saw him walking into the station, and I knew he was okay, and I could finally let this secret out.”

Maria fiddled with the handle of her purse, holding it against her like a shield. JJ and Emily sat opposite her, separated by the same table she had sat at just hours before. Spencer was still unconscious in the other room, his sisters keeping vigil. Derek had tried sitting with them, but they had all but pushed him out the door to be with his team after a few minutes. He had joined his team behind the one-way glass. It was unusual for the whole team to be in on the same interview, but there wasn’t one who was willing to leave. Penelope had taken up her rightful place at Derek’s side in the absence of his sisters, her brightly colored clothing and oversized bow in comical contrast to the darkened room they found themselves in.

“Anything you can tell us would be helpful,” Emily said. “I know its been a long time, but every detail, however seemingly insignificant, helps.”

Maria shook her head. “Oh no, like I said before, I remember. But before I tell you, I have to know… the boy, Spencer, is he okay? He’s safe? He’s been cared for?”

Derek grabbed his phone and shot off a quick text – _Tell her anything you feel is necessary. – DM._

Both of the agents’ phones lit up in unison on the table next to two turned over pictures and they both stole a quick glance at Derek’s text. JJ gave Maria a comforting smile. “After you called 911, Spencer was bounced around to a few foster homes but eventually ended up being adopted by a wonderful woman with three kids of her own. He grew up safe and happy.”

“And he’s… okay?” Maria asked again, emphasizing the word ‘okay.’

“He’s got degree’s in psychology, sociology, and philosophy and Ph.D’s in chemistry, engineering, and math. And his brother is one of my closest friends, so I can tell you he couldn’t ask for a better family. But…” Emily answered, knowing what Maria actually meant, “…you might know better than us that Spence had a traumatic childhood. His adopted mother, Fran, just passed away. And its been especially difficult for Spencer.”

“We think he’s reliving some past trauma, that’s why we’re looking into those women in the pictures we showed you earlier. We believe that they’re part of Spence’s past and the more we can learn, the more we can help him.”

“You must like him a lot,” Maria said.

“We’re always happy when we can close a case and bring closure to the family,” JJ answered.

“No, I mean… you call him Spence. You must have been friends for a while?”

“Actually, no,” JJ said, but she couldn’t help but smile. “But Derek is as good as family to me, and his family is my family. And even if he wasn’t, I’m pretty sure Spence – Spencer – worms his way into the hearts of everyone he meets fairly quickly.”

Derek felt his heart clench behind the glass. He thought of his text – _tell her anything you feel is necessary_ – and wondered if JJ was just putting on a show. But he silenced his thoughts. If the past two weeks had shown him anything, it was that his family was larger and stronger than he’d ever allowed himself to believe before.

Emily flipped over both pictures on the table – Andrea and Diana. “We believe that this woman, Diana Reid, might have been Spencer’s mother.”

Maria nodded. “That’s her. She looked different when I met her, but that’s definitely her.”

“And Andrea Maher?” JJ asked.

Maria looked at the other picture. “No, I don’t remember her. Its possible she came to the gas station. I mean if she was a junkie or a working girl in the area, I’m sure she did. But I really don’t remember her. This is the girl that was stabbed though? That that cop was talking about when I came in?”

“She was killed a few blocks from where you were working,” Emily confirmed, glossing over Derek and his angry outburst.

Maria nodded thoughtfully and sighed. “So the first thing you need to know is that I was in my late 50’s when I worked at the Flexon. I have five kids and at the time six of my grandbabies had been born. I have eleven now.” Maria paused and looked at JJ. “You’re a mom, right?”

JJ nodded. “I have a son,” she said.

“So you know. There’s a fierceness in love, when your baby’s in danger, and I could see it in Diana right away. I was taking my break outside behind the gas station when she pulled up. She got out of her car and I saw the look in her eyes… I knew she needed help. And she knew I’d help her. I don’t even remember thinking about it. I just got up off the bench to help her, but when I get closer, I realized there’s blood everywhere.”

“Where was the blood coming from?” Emily asked.

“I don’t think she was hurt, but there was blood all over her hands and her clothes,” Maria answered.

In the observation room, Hotch shot a look to Derek. “When Spencer had his first flashback about his mom, didn’t you say he mimicked stabbing himself in the stomach?”

Derek nodded. Another piece of the puzzle that wasn’t quite fitting. To say it was getting old was an understatement.

“She grabs me with both hands. She’s so panicked, crying, ‘You’ve gotta hide my son. He’s coming, you’ve gotta help me save Spencer. He’s gonna kill us.’ She opens the car door and I see him. Skinny little kid, white as a sheet. She has to reach in and grab him and she sorta hands him to me. I remember staring at this kid who is as still as a statue, wondering what the hell was happening, and then Diana grabs me again. She’s begging me to hide him, wait a few hours, then call 911.” Maria paused to wipe away a tear. “I remember telling her she needed to come inside too, but she just kept saying, don’t worry about me, just hide Spencer. Next thing I know, the hands she’s got on my arms, she’s pushing me backwards, trying to get me inside the gas station, but she accidentally pushes me and Spencer into a supply closet instead. I tried to pull her in with me, hide her too, but she’s not having it. Next thing I know, I’m in this closet, holding this kid who’s basically comatose in my arms, and I hear a guy’s voice outside.”

Maria took a trembling breath and JJ reached a hand across the table. “I know this isn’t easy to re-live,” she said comfortingly. “But we need to know what you heard.”

Maria’s voice broke. “He’s saying… you screwed it all up. If you’d just stayed at the hotel, none of this would have happened. He just keeps going on and on about how mad he is.”

“What specifically did he say?” Emily asked. “Even the smallest detail is helpful.”

She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. “He just kept saying things like… you killed her, this is your fault, and asking where the kid was.”

“What was Diana saying in response? Did she sound scared? Hurt? Mad?” Emily asked.

“Mad,” Maria answered quickly. “Mad as hell, actually. I remember because it surprised me, ‘cause she had been so scared with me a few seconds earlier. But she’s telling him off. She’s asking how many girls he’s killed, and he’s saying ‘You killed that one,’ and she’s calling him an idiot, how she’d only done it to save Spencer, and he better just leave, how he was never going to get his hands on Spencer again.”

Derek’s stomach clenched at that word – _again._ Hotch and Gideon caught it, too.

“Then he says, ‘Shut up and tell me where Spencer is,’ and I shouldn’t have done it, but I moved back the curtain on the window a bit ‘cause there was an edge to his voice that scared me more than anything that’d happened yet and I needed to know what was going on. I’ve always regretted doing that because later I realized that if I could see what was happening, so could Spencer. And I could have spared him from it.”

“And what did you see?”

“I see this guy with a knife out and he’s rushing toward her, and he stabs her in the stomach, three, four times, maybe more.”

“Did Diana call out?” JJ asked.

Maria nodded. “Just one word – _William._ ”

Derek felt Penelope drop his hand. Before Hotch could open his mouth, she said, “On it, sir,” and rushed out of the room to her computer. Whoever William was, wherever he was, Garcia was about to turn his life upside down.

JJ let go of Maria’s hands and exchanged them for some tissues and a glass of water. “Do you remember what the knife looked like?” she asked.

Maria thought hard. “It wasn’t like a butcher or kitchen knife. More like a big pocket knife or switch blade. Black handle, though, not like one of those red Swiss Army ones.”

“What happened after he stabbed her?”

“Nothing. It was clear… she died right away. He dragged her body to the car and drove away.”

Maria gave Emily and JJ a weak smile. “Maybe I should have come forward a long time ago. I don’t know. I thought a lot about the girl they were arguing about, the one they killed… I hoped that that girl’s family got closure and justice. And I thought a lot about William being out there somewhere… hoping that he wasn’t still hurting people. That’s kept me up at night, thinking maybe he’s out there killing. But every time I’d think of going to the cops, I’d think about Spencer. I didn’t know if sharing what I knew would have kept other people from getting hurt, but I knew that keeping quiet meant that he’d never find Spencer. When he stabbed Diana, I know this sounds crazy… but I swear to God, there was a peace on her face. It was like she knew she was dying, and that that meant William would never where she’d put Spencer. So maybe it was the wrong call, I don’t know. But she sacrificed her life to keep that boy safe, and I wasn’t about to screw that up. So I hid him in the back room of the gas station, cleaned him up as best I could, and a few hours later I sat him down on the curb and called the cops. Told them the kid had been sitting there for a while, that I didn’t know him, and someone needed to come get him.”

Derek tore himself away from the window and left the observation room, his body so full of emotions that he could hardly think. Before he fully knew what he was doing, he found himself opening the door to the room JJ, Emily, and Maria, were in. The three women looked up, surprised.

“Uh, Maria, this is Supervisory Special –.”

Before Emily could finish, Derek folded the tiny woman in a huge hug. He could feel the tears on his face, and after a moment, he could feel her melt into his embrace.

“Thank you,” Derek said finally, letting her go slightly, his hands still around her arms. “You saved his life.”

“You’re his brother,” she said, tears on her face as well. Derek nodded in confirmation. “Then you should know, there’s not a day that’s gone by that I haven’t prayed for your brother, thought about him, hoped he was okay. I was always too afraid to check up on Spencer, though I have to admit I did track him down one more time that day. On my way home I stopped into the ER, thinking maybe I’d get lucky and he’d be there getting checked out by a doctor or something. Sure enough, there he was with a social worker, sitting in the waiting room. I sat there for a while watching them, listening to her try to talk to him, and I realized that she didn’t even know his name. I was too scared to talk to the social worker but I did go up to the front desk and tell them that the kid’s name was Spencer. I figured passing along the name his mother gave him was only right.”

Derek had to laugh. “That’s how we know his name,” he said. “We’ve been trying to figure out how we came with a name when he was non-verbal for so long. Took our mom years to get him really talking.”

That caught Maria’s attention. “These two agents said that Spencer’s been having a hard time coping with her death.” She took Derek’s hands in hers and suddenly Derek felt like he was looking into the eyes of a grandmother. “Listen, whatever happened to Spencer that day when the girl was killed and then watching his mom get stabbed would mess anyone up for life, and I have to imagine that that day was just one in a series of nightmares. If that boy can get through that kind of trauma to multiple doctorates and meaningful friendships,” she nodded toward JJ and Emily, “then I know he’ll get through this, too. I promise, you all will.”

 

* * *

 

 

It was dinnertime by the time Maria had left the station and Spencer had woken up, ready to continue on with his day like nothing had happened. Spencer seemed ready to tackle the case again which his siblings were completely unwilling to let him do.

“Why don’t you guys go out for dinner, my treat?” Hotch suggested.

“You don’t have to do that,” Derek immediately rebuffed.

“You’ve all had a long day, and it’d make me feel good knowing there was something I was doing to help,” Hotch answered honestly. He held out some cash. “Please.”

Gratefully, Derek took the money. It wasn’t that he was in need by any means, nor was the money a sacrifice for Hotch, but the cash in his hand reminded him for the millionth time that he wasn’t alone. He turned around to his sisters and flashed the bills. “Anyone in the mood for Romano’s Pizza?” he asked. Spencer immediately broke out into a huge grin which in turn brought a hint of a smile to Hotch’s lips.

“We’ll see you tomorrow,” Hotch said.

As the Morgan’s left the police station, the team began to gather in the bull pen. Emily and JJ had reset the board back up from Derek’s outburst, adding a few bits of information in the process. Diana Reid was no longer missing, instead under her picture was a date of death. She had joined the side of the victims and a new name was put in her former place as the Unsub – William.

“Now that they’re gone, tell us what you’ve found,” Hotch said to Garcia.

“Showtime,” she said, cracking her knuckles and hitting a few buttons on her keyboard. Her screen popped up on one of the TVs mounted on the wall. “Remember how I said that Diana was a pre-internet ghost? Well I did some digging, because she was weirdly ghost like. Especially for someone with schizophrenia living in hotels. She wouldn’t have created much of a trail with that kind of lifestyle, but she also wouldn’t have been erasing it. Besides, since the internet wasn’t even a thing when she died, she couldn’t have become a ghost. Unless, she did become a ghost. Oh… a ghost ghosting herself, now that’s a show I’d watch on the Sci Fi channel.” Hotch shot Garcia a stern look and she snapped out of her thoughts. “Right. So someone basically erased her out of existence with the exception of a police record for disturbing the peace way back in the day, which is how we had her fingerprints to ID her at the fourth crime scene, and a medical record of a brief stint at a mental hospital for the paranoid schizophrenia. Police and medical records are easy to hack but difficult to erase, so those survived, just waiting for me come by and hack.”

“That’s a comforting thought,” Emily said dryly.

“And in those medical records was the piece de resistance,” she said. She dramatically hit a button and a document filled the screen. “Voila. Diana Reid checked out of the hospital AMA, but because she was in for a psych hold, she wasn’t able to check herself out. So who did the deed? None other than William Reid, relation – her husband.”

“Please tell me this guy is still alive and you know where he is,” Emily said.

“Grand Rapids, Michigan, home and work addresses are being sent to your phones…. Now.” Simultaneously, everyone’s phones beeped and buzzed.

Gideon glanced at his phone. “JJ, call over and ask the local PD to pick him up and hold him for us on suspicion of murder. Hotch and I will take the jet and be there in two hours. Let’s nail this son of a bitch and figure out what the hell happened to Spencer and Diana once and for all.”


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter just would. not. come. Can't tell you how many times I sat down to write, only to scrap the bit I'd already written and end up in a worse spot than before. I knew I'd hate writing about William, but I didn't realize just how much. Hopefully with him out of the way after this chapter, I'll be able to get the rest of the story out easily :)

On Friday morning, Derek was awakened not by his alarm clock or the sounds of his family in the house, but by the pounding of his own heart beat. He clenched his fists on reflex, feeling his already tense muscles ripple up his arms through his shoulders and back. He had gone to bed full of pizza and, encouraged by his sisters, a few beers. Sitting with his siblings, it was the closest he’d felt to relaxed yet, but there had been something pulling at the edges of his consciousness all evening – and now the white hot rage was coursing through his veins with every heartbeat –

_William. William. William._

Hotch had texted him before they were seated for dinner: _“William was Diana’s husband, probably Spencer’s father. Currently being taken into custody for questioning in Michigan. Gideon and I are flying out now. Will keep you updated.”_ He looked around for his work phone to see if there were any new updates and with a jolt of panic realized it was gone. “God damn it, Sarah,” he muttered angrily, knowing exactly had confiscated his phone. “Garcia’s mother hen-ing’s already too much for one man to handle.”

Both Sarah and Desiree were sitting on the living room couches cradling cups of coffee when Derek appeared at the bottom of the stairs. Sarah held up his cell phone in the air and Derek snatched it out of her hand. “Before you yell at me, know that it was actually Desiree’s idea.”

“Was not,” Desiree scoffed. “She wanted to take it so you could get some sleep.”

“And you wanted to take it so you could answer any calls from the FBI _while_ he was sleeping.”

He scrolled through the call log and recent text messages and was both disappointed and relieved to find nothing had come in over night. He wouldn’t have minded an update on the case, but he wasn’t sure how kindly Hotch would have taken to Desiree answering his phone. “You can’t just take this,” he bristled, shaking his phone at them. “And you can’t answer my work calls.”

Desiree rolled her eyes. “I forgot how much Hangover Derek sucks.”

“He had like two beers,” Sarah retorted. “And he’s right. We’re sorry. We were just trying to take care of you.”

“I know,” Derek sighed. He looked at the screen of his phone – 6:52am. “When’s Aunt Yvonne expecting Spencer?”

“9-ish. She offered to make all of us breakfast if we wanted to come over, but I figured it should just be Spencer… he’s not going to be happy if we delay The Mission with our pointless socializing,” Sarah said with a smile. “Then the viewings at 4. Yvonne said she’d drive Spencer over and meet us there.”

Derek paused for a moment – “We’re really doing this?” he asked. “Letting Spencer give the eulogy?” It was a question that didn’t have to be asked – there was no stopping that train now – but Spencer had yet to accurately string together the words “Fran” and “dead” and “car accident” without also fake-stabbing himself in the gut or going non-verbal. And now that they had a clear picture of what was haunting Spencer, asking him to public speak – the task he had never once been able to accomplish even when Fran had been by his side – it all seemed too insurmountable.

The silence was broken by a cell phone alarm’s muffled chirping. “6:55,” Sarah said, reaching into the pillows of the couch and pulling out her iPhone. “My Spencer Alarm. Who’s doing the honors today?”

Desiree opened her mouth to volunteer but Derek got there first. “I’ll do it. I need to spend some time with him,” he said. _And also get out of this room_.

Spencer’s room was next to Derek’s, which had been, if he were being honest, annoying growing up. There were plenty of nights that Spencer didn’t sleep a wink and Derek could hear him rocking in bed, his headboard methodically hitting the wall over and over again. He would talk to himself, listen to the same song or audio book a thousand times in a row, spoken word always sped up to almost inhuman speeds that only Spencer seemed to be able to comprehend. Derek stopped in front of Spencer’s door and fingered the remnants of the padlock on the doorframe, placed on the outside so that Spencer could be contained in his room. He remembered his mom sobbing as she drilled the lock into the door frame and reassuring her that it was only to keep Spencer safe. Derek had nearly forgotten how uncontrollable Spencer used to be at times, that even being unsupervised for a few seconds outside his highly stripped down and unbreakable room could be disastrous if he was in the wrong mood. Punching holes in mirrors, burning himself on the stove, throwing books through windows… _god_ , Derek thought, _he’s come so far._

When his cell phone screen finally showed 7am, he walked into his room. “Rise and shine, sleepy head.”

Spencer didn’t move a muscle.

“Come on, pretty boy, you don’t need that much beauty sleep.”

Spencer gave an almost inaudible huff.

“Its already 7:01am,” Derek taunted, and with that Spencer’s eyes shot open.

They ambled through the routine – bathroom, breakfast including coffee with a nauseating amount of sugar, and then back to the bathroom. So far Derek had yet to get Spencer bathed successfully and as both brothers stood in the bathroom staring at one another, he felt the anxiety of an impending meltdown creep into his brain and stomach.

But instead Spencer started dutifully taking off his clothes and stepped in the shower. He looked at Derek expectantly and after a second Derek realized Spencer was waiting for him to turn on the water. It was too cold, then too hot, but before too long they were making smooth progress through the shower routine.

“Two weeks almost we’ve been trying to do this. You could have just said ‘I don’t like baths,’” Derek said.

“I don’t like baths,” Spencer repeated.

Derek couldn’t help but laugh. “No matter how old you get, you’re always gonna be my smart-ass younger brother, aren’t you?”

“Your age is relative to my age, so of course no matter how old I get I’ll still be your younger brother. I can’t get older than you. Though of course you could argue that time is a separate property from programmed cellular death and DNA methylation.”

Spencer continued lecturing as Derek turned the water off, then held out a hand to help Spencer out of the shower. As he dried off, Spencer’s lecture took a definite rise in pitch, a tell tale sign Spencer’s anxiety was rising.

“What’s going on in that head?” Derek asked, helping Spencer into his jeans. Spencer’s eyes darted around the room. “Looking for your speech book?” he guessed. Spencer nodded. “It’s downstairs I think. We can go get it after you get dressed. Or I can try to guess…”

“Try to guess,” Spencer immediately pounced at the offer.

Derek ran through the list of topics in his head his brother might be getting anxious about. “Wondering what Aunt Yvonne’s making for lunch? Wondering about the weather today?”

Spencer gave him a pained look that could only be interpreted as, _Aren’t you a professional profiler for the FBI?_

“Okay, okay,” Derek said. “You’re worried about writing the eulogy with Aunt Yvonne? Or what the viewing is going to be like?”

“Eulogy with Aunt Yvonne,” Spencer repeated. He scrubbed his face with the towel a bit harder than Derek would have liked. Derek handed him his shirt and helped him get his lanky arms and still dripping head through the right holes. Spencer looked at him. “ _The eulogy is the most important moment of a funeral, the final tribute to a loved one that should encompass their entire lives, greatest accomplishments, and proudest moments._ ”

“You read that somewhere?” Derek asked. Spencer nodded. “Okay, what part of that is making you anxious?”

“The eulogy is the most important moment of a funeral, the final tribute to a loved one that should encompass their entire lives, greatest accomplishments, and proudest moments.”

“… the whole thing is making you anxious?” Derek asked.

Spencer let out a huge, frustrated sigh and repeated himself again. “The eulogy is the most important moment of a funeral, the final tribute to a loved one that should encompass their entire lives, greatest accomplishments, and proudest moments.”

This time it was Derek’s turn to rub his face. “Sorry, man, I don’t get it. But I promise, whatever it is about the eulogy making you anxious, Aunt Yvonne’s gonna be able to help you with.”

That wasn’t enough to put Spencer’s mind at ease, but it was enough to get him through the rest of the morning routine and in the car. The ride over was quiet, save the eclectic sounds of an inner city neighborhood waking up on a Friday morning. Derek could hear Spencer whispering about the etymology of various funeral related words under his breath. Aunt Yvonne’s house was normally within walking distance, but with the still chilly April mornings combined with the weight of emotions Derek couldn’t shake off, walking their well worn path hadn’t even crossed his mind.

Predictably, Aunt Yvonne was waiting on her porch step, bundled up in her robe and winter coat over her pajamas. “My boys are home,” she shouted, rushing to their car side. She gave Spencer a hug first and then came around and folded Derek into a bone crushing hug.

“Your sisters told me all about that foolishness with the case in Virginia. Fran’s not even buried yet and you’ve got him in a town with a serial killer on the loose?” she admonished. “And now your FBI friends are here now trying to find Spencer’s birth family?”

Derek physically stepped back; he hadn’t counted on being in trouble with Aunt Yvonne. “Auntie –.”

She cut him off with a gentle pat to the cheek. “You’re doing everything you can to take care of our boy, right?” she asked.

“I am.”

“And your gut – its telling you this is the best way to help Spencer?”

Derek took a deep breath. “It is,” he promised.

“Then I trust you,” she said. “You’re a good man, Derek, and an even better brother. Whatever you’ve got cookin’ with the FBI, I trust you that its for the best. Lord knows you’d rather die than see that boy hurt anymore.”

Suddenly Derek was acutely aware that Spencer was standing right behind them. “Spencer, can you go into the house? I have to talk to Aunt Yvonne for a minute.” Spencer huffed but dutifully bounded in the house, no doubt eager to get started on the eulogy. Derek and Yvonne walked back to the porch slowly, giving Spencer time to get all the way in the house, before sitting on the porch steps together.

“I don’t know how much Sarah and Desiree told you…”

“They said he’s having flashbacks to before he was adopted,” she said. “Really struggling to understand what’s happening with Fran now.”

“Its worse than that,” he said. “The flashbacks are of his birth mother being stabbed and murdered by a man we think is his father. We think he might have been abusing him Spencer for years.”

Yvonne shook her head. “Lord…” she breathed. “I always thought I wanted to know what his life was like before he came to us, but now I’m not so sure.”

“Trust me, I understand. But the only way to help him through these flashbacks and process the abuse is to know what he went through, and since he can’t verbally tell us what he experienced, we have no choice but to talk to his abuser. Which is what our team leaders are doing now. They flew to Michigan this morning to start the interrogation process. My guess is they’ll have more information than we ever wanted to know by this afternoon.”

They sat in silence for a moment, letting the weight of it settle in. “He was anxious about writing the eulogy,” Derek finally continued. “He’s done his homework, of course, knows everything about what he’s supposed to do. But I think actually writing something that captures who Mom was… I don’t know if it’s the emotions that have him anxious, or that he doesn’t know every fact about her life, or the public speaking maybe. He was pretty worked up this morning.”

Yvonne took Derek’s hand and squeezed it tight. “Won’t be the first time he and I play 20 questions during a panic attack,” she said. “Can’t say we’re gonna get through this morning unscathed, but we’ll get through it, don’t you worry.”

Derek had to laugh. _Don’t worry_. It sounded so simple. “I know, I know,” Yvonne said, reading his mind. She stood up and Derek followed suit. “I don’t think there’s such a thing as loving someone without worrying to death about them, too.”

 

* * *

 

The interrogation wasn’t going well.

William Reid was a slight, pasty man, with an air of superiority that all unsubs seemed to reek of. He sat behind the metal table in the interrogation room looking calm and relaxed, tapping the edge of his wallet on the table. Gideon and Hotch stood behind the one-way mirror, watching the small display of false boredom and bravado. He had been picked up the afternoon before and then cut loose after a few hours of refusing to answer even the most basic of questions. Hotch had asked him to return to the station the next morning, which William did promptly at 8am… either the sign of a perfectly innocent man or a thoroughly guilty one.

The number of crimes the BAU suspected him of was a veritable grab bag – everything from child abuse to murder to tampering with government documents. The day before, Gideon and Hotch had leaned in only on Diana’s murder. The line of questioning had gone nowhere, since William insisted that their “marriage” was simply a quick lived friendship in which he had posed as her husband to get her out of a forced hospitalization.

_“So it would come as a surprise to you to learn she’s been missing since April 12, 1990?”_ Hotch had asked after an hour of questioning, hoping that dropping the specific date of the murder if nothing else would generate a telling micro-expression.

_“Any news you could tell me about Diana would be a surprise since I haven’t seen her since the late 80’s, alive and well.”_

It was that lie that caused Gideon’s always-thin patience to snap. _“You, or whoever you paid to erase Diana from existence, weren’t bad with a computer, but trust me when I say you’re no match for our technical analyst,”_ he had said. _“I don’t really get how she does what she does, but she tells me that you two were married in 1979 and had a nice quiet life together until she began showing symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia. She was checked into a psych hospital for treatment but you checked her out against medical advice.”_

_“Is there a question in there somewhere?”_ William had asked.

_“You moved her around, forced her to commit your crimes, then decided you were better off without her and you stabbed her behind a gas station. We have an eye witness willing to testify.”_

_“An eye witness who would have a hell of a hard time testifying. Again, do you have a question or are you just grandstanding?”_

_“You’re a lawyer, you’ve seen this show before, what do you think my question is?”_

William had given Gideon a casual smirk. _“I have no idea. Because aside from a few scraps on google, an eye witness who took two decades to come forward, and a timeline so empty a DA wouldn’t bring it within 100 feet of a court room, you’ve got nothing. And even if you had all the evidence in the world that I did something to Diana, you’re still missing the only thing that matters – a body. No body, no crime.”_

Which brought them to Friday morning. Hotch and Gideon watched William check his watch, this time probably not so much for show as for actual boredom.

“Yesterday he said that our eye witness would have ‘a hell of a time testifying’,” Gideon said.

“He has no idea Maria exists,” Hotch said.

“So he means Spencer. We can use that,” Gideon said. “Everything hinges on him admitting to his relationship with Diana. If he admits to that, then we can get him to admit that he forced her to kill Andrea Maher, which will lead into a confession about murdering the other three girls, and the abuse that he put Spencer through.”

Hotch picked up a folder from a nearby desk. “Trying to erase his relationship with her is the one thing he thinks has kept him safe all these years.” 

“Then its time for Round Two,” Gideon said. They rounded the corner into the interrogation room. “Mr. Reid, thanks for coming back in.”

“Always happy to help the police with whatever they need,” William smiled.

“Good… that’s good,” Gideon said. He relaxed back in his chair. “Because we thought about what you said yesterday and you’re right. No body, no crime.”

“Which is why we thought we’d ask you about these other bodies that we _do_ have,” Hotch said. He opened the folder and spread out the pictures of their victims: Jessica Martinson, Alexandra Peterson, the unknown third victim, and Andrea Maher.

All the color drained from Reid’s already pale face. “Know them?” Hotch asked.

“Before you answer, you might want to know we have an eye witness who says you do.”

William licked his lips and took a long time in answering. From the look on his face, it was easy to see that their suspect had just been blindsided and was trying to think clearly through a wave of panic. When he finally answered, his voice was low. “There’s no way your witness is fit to testify.”

“Our witness holds three PhD’s in mathematics, chemistry, and engineering, and BA’s in psychology, sociology, and philosophy.”

“I thought you profilers would be able to come up with a better lie than that,” William almost laughed.

Pure hatred ran up and down Hotch’s spine as he fixed his steel gaze on William. “Spencer has caught serial killers, he has a family, and has done more and overcome more in his young life than most people do in their entire lives, and despite your best efforts at destroying him, he will now be your downfall.”

William opened his mouth to answer, but Hotch cut him off before he could let out a sound. He stood up and leaned over the table, face close to Williams. “I listened to your bullshit yesterday, now its time you listen to me. Spencer’s willing to testify that you coerced Diana into killing Andrea Maher. And his testimony will confirm that you killed the other three – does a knife with a black handle and a pearl inlay sound familiar to you? And if going away on five counts of murder isn’t enough, I’m going to fight to make sure every day for the rest of your miserable life you wake up in prison. And every night you go to sleep in prison. And in the in between I’ll be praying that your fellow inmates treat you with the same kindness you showed your own son.”

William slammed his hands on the table and stood up, matching Hotch’s posture. “My son was a retard. My wife was insane. I was running a freak show in my own home. You know _nothing_.”

“I know that instead of manning up and handling your business, you abused them and you killed your wife – and you would have killed your son if you’d had the chance!”

“You think you’re gonna lead me into confessing that I killed my wife that easily?” William shouted. He scoffed. “You’re not as good as you think you are.”

The words echoed in the silence of the room. The whole police station seemed to have stilled. Hotch and William continued to stare each other down, and from the corner of the table, Gideon suppressed a genuine laugh.

“Actually, he’s exactly that good,” he said, still lounging in his chair. “Got you to admit in about five minutes what I tried to do for two hours yesterday.”

William broke eye contact with Hotch and shot a confused look at Gideon, replaying the exchange in his mind. Slowly, he sat down.

“Lets try this again,” Gideon said. “Tell me about that wife of yours and what happened on April 12, 1990.”

 

* * *

 

_“Interrogation going well. Will have a full confession by the end of the day. – AH.”_

JJ checked her watch and gave a low whistle. “9:20am. That’s gotta be some kind of record.”

“Psh. I’ve been tortured by the FBI’s Most Wanted, and I can say with confidence that if Hotch and Gideon ever turned their profiling powers on me, I’d spill my shit in an instant,” Emily laughed.

“It’s that patented Aaron Hotchner Crazy Eyes glare,” Garcia joked, giving her friends a laser eyed stare while taking a dramatic drink of her unicorn frappacino. They sat in a Starbucks down the street from their hotel. With nothing left to do at the police station normally the team would be on the jet back to Virginia, but despite the obvious problem with that – namely, their jet being in Michigan – there also hadn’t been any mention at all of packing up and leaving Chicago. At least not without Derek Morgan and their newest family member in tow.

“Deep down these guys always want to confess. They want to talk about their crimes, they can’t help but re-live them even if it sends them to prison. Once you get them to start talking, they don’t shut up,” JJ commented. She picked at her donut. “I’ve gotten pretty good at eating despite whatever nauseatingly disgusting case we’re working on, but every time I think about poor Spence…”

Prentiss swiped the donut off her her plate. “Case is over,” she said, taking a huge bite.

JJ rolled her eyes playfully. “Case might be over, but there’s a reason we’re still in Chicago…”

“What are we going to do until the viewing?” Garcia asked. “We’ve got a few hours, but feels icky to sight see and be happy and such, considering…”

The table fell silent until JJ took a deep breath. “There is one thing I thought we could do… not sure if Morgan will appreciate it, but from what I think I know of Spence, he will.”

JJ pulled out her phone and showed them a draft of a text she had written out. Before anyone could comment, Garcia’s bedazzled hand jumped out and grabbed JJ’s phone. “We have to do this,” she declared, pushing send on the text.

There was a moment of silence as they listened to the sound of JJ’s phone sending off the text. “Ok… guess we’re doing this,” she said, grabbing her phone back. “And if it backfires, you’re the one talking Morgan down. I already got in trouble with him once last week and that was plenty for my lifetime.”

But Garcia didn’t seem to register her concerns. “Come on, ladies, we have so much to do!” she said, grabbing her drink and coat in a flurry and running out the door.


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for the kudos, bookmarks, and comments. Its cliche, but they really do make my day! Not to mention they show up in my inbox reminding me to keep writing. Thanks for all the pushes to keep going with this story!

Chapter 18:

The city of Chicago was roaring with Friday rush hour traffic, thousands of people trying to get home to start their weekends. April in the city was always a beautiful time – buds were beginning to bloom on the long-dormant trees, the chilly weather felt strangely warm after a winter of sub zero temperatures, playgrounds and parks came alive with families desperate to jump start the summer. Sarah, Desiree, and Derek drove silently through the chaotic and vibrant life of the city in their mother’s old Buick. Sarah and Desiree both had their own vehicles, and someone on the team had dropped off the usual black SUV at some point in the last few days for Derek, but that afternoon they had piled into their mom’s car without discussion. Now Derek wondered if it would draw stares of pity – _those poor kids, couldn’t help but take their mom’s car, bless them –_ but he stuffed those thoughts away. This day wasn’t about him. It was about Fran Morgan. And it was about getting his siblings through in one piece.

 _God, help us get through in one piece_ , he prayed desperately.

Truthfully, he hadn’t given the visitation much thought. Too much of his worry had been placed on the funeral and it was just in the last hour or so had he really grasped that after all his longing to see his mother again, he was about to see her, cold and still in a casket.

Derek’s phone chirped and Desiree, sitting in the front seat, looked at him questioningly, still remembering their conversation from earlier. “Go for it,” he said. If it was Gideon or Hotch, he was as curious as she was.

She seized his phone and read aloud, “Its from AH.”

“Aaron Hotchner, Hotch,” Derek supplied.

“Got full confession and back on the plane now. He’s being charged with five counts of first degree murder, domestic violence, and sexually assaulting a minor. See you at the viewing – approx. 30 minutes out.” Her head whipped up. “What does that mean? Derek – is that… is that… sexually assaulting a minor… does that mean Spencer?”

Derek wanted to say no, but it was all he could do to keep driving straight. Blood rushed to his head as his gut plunged; he had suspected, deep down in a place he couldn’t bring himself to acknowledge, Spencer’s terrified screaming about the bath tub…

“It could have to do with any one of those murdered girls,” Sarah said from the back seat. “Right? They all looked young. That sicko could have raped…” but the words died in her throat as though she were being choked.

A sick silence descended on the car.

Finally, _finally_ , Derek found his voice. “Right now we have to focus on getting through the visitation in one piece. We’ll get answers about the case later.”

“You’re not upset?” Desiree asked.

“I’m mad as hell,” Derek snapped. “But that’s not going to help us at the moment, is it.”

He was almost thankful to be pulling into the funeral home parking lot. It was a few minutes before 4pm; he knew Yvonne knew well enough that Spencer needed to arrive precisely at 4pm. He could feel his sisters prickling at his angry comment and he grabbed both their hands as they walked through the parking lot. They both squeezed his hands back in forgiveness.

“That team of your sure is persistent,” Sarah said.

“What?” Derek asked. He followed her nod toward the large double doors of the funeral home where he could see Garcia, Emily, and JJ waiting.

“I’m glad you have them,” she smiled. “Desiree and I’ll go inside and check things out. See you in there.”

Sarah and Desiree slipped past Garcia, Emily, and JJ at the door, leaving Derek with his team. They stood together in awkward silence, despite having seen each other just the day before at the station, until Garcia took the few steps to Derek and folded him in a hug.

“I know you hate sympathy, so don’t think of this as sympathy,” she said in a rush. “Think of it as an ‘I haven’t seen you in 24 hours and I missed you so much,’ hug.”

Derek smiled at his baby girl, then looked past her at JJ and Emily. “Don’t look at us,” Emily said dryly. “I’ve missed you, but not that much.”

“We don’t want to rush you or anything, but we thought we’d wait out here and walk in with you, if you wanted the company,” JJ offered. She couldn’t help but think of how well her last real attempt at talking to Derek had gone over in Loring.

“I’ve got to wait for Spencer. He and my aunt should be pulling up any minute. You guys can go in, I’ll see you in there,” he said, dismissing their help. “And… thanks for coming, it means a lot,” he added hastily. It was genuine, but the words were still hard to force out.

The three ladies shared a look between them that Derek couldn’t quite decipher, but went inside without argument. Somehow he knew Garcia was already formulating a speech to give to him later.

Derek didn’t have to wait long for Yvonne and Spencer to pull up. Her familiar deep blue Honda pulled up curbside to the front door. As Yvonne got out of the driver’s seat, Derek came forward to help Spencer out of the passenger’s side. He immediately smiled at the sight of his brother: Yvonne had overly gelled his hair back (“out of his beautiful eyes,” he knew his mom would be saying) and he was wearing what Fran had always called his “doctor suit” – a brown tweed get-up with elbow patches and a plaid button up shirt. Derek didn’t know if it was a “doctor suit” because of the character from Spencer’s beloved Doctor Who TV show or because it was standard nerd attire that no doubt had been worn to countless classes and lectures throughout his schooling. Either way, it was Spencer through and through, and Derek both beamed and physically hurt knowing how their mom would have loved to see him so dressed up and handsome.

“How’s it going?” Derek asked casually, loading the question up with meaning with a pointed look at his aunt.

“We’re good, really,” she assured him.

“Really,” Spencer echoed, getting out of the car. He held onto Derek like he always did with familiar people in unfamiliar situations. Derek held out his other arm for his aunt.

She smiled at him gratefully. “How are _you_ doing?” she asked.

Derek’s heart threatened to drop into his stomach as he thought about Hotch’s text. He swallowed thickly. “Just trying to make it through in one piece,” he answered about as honestly as he could. There was no point in lying to Aunt Yvonne; she could always see right through him.

She hummed. “Something tells me we’ll need to talk later,” she said. Derek could only nod. They stopped in front of the funeral home doors. “Derek honey, park my car for me. I’ll bring Spencer inside.” Derek moved to protest, wanting to stay with Spencer, but stopped before he could make a sound when he saw Yvonne’s face. “We researched all about viewing services today and it’d be a shame for me to miss out on the lecture I helped him prepare for,” she winked.

Spencer bounced on his toes, like a runner getting ready for the gun to go off. No sooner did Yvonne ask him what he knew about viewings did Spencer immediately launch into the history of funeral homes.

Derek got in Yvonne’s car and moved it into a nearby spot. He lingered in her car, relishing the familiar smell of it; growing up he and his siblings had spent as much time at Yvonne’s home as they had at their own. There was something about the familiar mixture of her perfume, the library books in the back seat, and the disinfectant wipes she was always using that just smelled like _home_. He took a deep breath and tried to center himself. He could feel the black hole inside him tugging at his heart, trying to pull him under, but it wouldn’t do anyone any good if he fell apart today. He was needed.

As evidenced by the guttural cries coming from inside the funeral home.

Derek’s heart sunk as he jumped out of the car and sprinted inside the funeral home as fast as he could, readying himself to deal with whatever form of aggression or self harm Spencer’s emotions were causing. Thankfully, the layout of the home was relatively simple – down a too-white hallway, past a gaudy bouquet of silk flowers, and into an ornate wood-filled room. He surveyed the scene, and was shocked for a moment to see Spencer sitting quietly in the back row. It wasn’t Spencer shouting, it was Sarah – wracked with sobs, being held tightly by Desiree. She was gripping onto the side of the open casket as she sank to her knees.

Derek felt his heart break in a million pieces. His strong Sarah, level headed, calm under pressure, sensible, logical… being lowered to the floor by their sister as she cried out as though someone had stabbed her. She rocked back and forth, having lost all sense of time and place, Desiree stroking her hair lovingly and whispering “Shhh… its okay, I know,” in her ear. As he watched in shock as his sister fell apart, he became slowly aware of a commotion by his side.

Spencer had gotten up and was holding his speech book out to Derek expectantly. He looked down at the page.

 _Mom is dead_ , it read.

God, he didn’t have the emotional capacity for this, his blood and adrenaline still pumping from hearing Sarah’s cries. “And?” Derek asked, the question coming out harsher than he meant it to.

Spencer pointed to the phrase again.

“Right. That’s what we’re doing here.”

Spencer shook his open book at Derek expectantly, impatiently.

Unlike Aunt Yvonne, he just didn’t have anything left in him to play 20 questions on this day. “If you want something, just say it,” he said.

As soon as the words left his mouth, he regretted them. Spencer threw his book down with force, then struck his leg angrily. A few heads turned in their direction. Derek immediately grabbed his brother, first firmly grabbing his arms, and then coming around behind him to get a sort-of basket hold on him, and walked backwards through the row of chairs until they were seated in the back corner, Spencer held firmly against Derek’s body.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” Derek whispered, painfully aware that his sister was still sobbing 30 feet from them in the front of the room in front of their mother’s open casket. “I shouldn’t have snapped at you, especially about talking. I know you’re doing the best you can.”

Instead of squirming away, Spencer leaned into the deep pressure and settled against Derek’s chest.

“I know you’re doing the best you can,” Spencer repeated.

“Yes, you are,” Derek confirmed.

Spencer jabbed a finger into Derek’s chest, then settled his head on Derek’s shoulder. “You are,” he echoed.

They sat together for a long time, two brothers holding each other in the back of the room, watching their sisters hold each other in the front of the room. Neither pair seemed to care much that the room slowly filled and emptied around them. Visitors came and went; Derek recognized some from church, some from the community center, from the neighborhood. They gave the siblings pity filled nods and smiles, and Derek gave polite, straight mouthed smiles in return while continuing to rock his too-tall brother in his arms. Eventually Sarah and Desiree moved to seats in the front row. Hotch and Gideon arrived soon after that, joining the rest of the team in a row nearby. The viewing had to be boring for them, Derek thought vaguely, but there they were, a wall of black suits punctuated by Garcia’s feathered hair clip – an unmovable presence in the midst of chaos.

“Mr. Morgan?” he heard behind him.

He turned to see the funeral director behind him. He shook Spencer gently to get his brothers attention, then offloaded him to the chair next to him. To the director’s credit, the strange sight of two grown men holding each other didn’t seem to phase him. It probably was far from the strangest sight he’d seen at the funeral home.

“Derek,” he introduced himself. “You’re Mr. Wilkerson?”

“John, please.” They shook hands. “I wanted to check in with you all, see if there was anything you needed.”

“We’re okay,” Derek shrugged, then had to huff out a laugh at his choice of words.

“Relatively speaking, I understand.” Mr. Wilkerson said, gently. “If you do think of anything, please don’t hesitate to ask. Shelley at the welcome desk…”

Mr. Wilkerson trailed off, as Spencer stood up. “You’re the funeral director?” he asked.

“I am, son,” he said.

“You’re a funeral expert, then?”

Mr. Wilkerson chuckled slightly. “More than most, I suppose. Fortunately and unfortunately.”

Spencer’s brow furrowed as he reached over and grabbed his speech book from the floor a few seats down. He flipped through the pages of his book until he found what he was looking for. “Mom is dead,” he read aloud, then looked to Mr. Wilkerson, clearly expecting something.

Mr. Wilkerson looked to Derek, who was no help, and then back to Spencer. “I’m sorry about that, son.”

Spencer flipped a few more pages forward. “My mom passed away in a car accident,” he read.

Mr. Wilkerson looked to Derek again. “I don’t… I’m sorry, son. I really am. I wish I could tell you why bad things happened to good people. Death never seems fair.” Spencer clearly was expecting more from the funeral director, but Derek gave him a smile to thank him for trying and waved him off. He nodded politely. “Remember, Shelley, anything you need, she’s just outside.”

“Thanks,” Derek said, then turned his attention to Spencer. He felt a bit renewed; time to figure out what Spencer needed.

Derek vaguely remembered making the first page on the trip back from Loring. Before “mom” meant anything other than Fran. Before Diana. The second page had been written by Gideon on the airplane.

“I’m listening,” Derek said. “Can you tell me why these two pages?”

Spencer flipped back to the first. “Mom is dead,” he read aloud.

“And…” Derek prompted.

“And Mom died in a car accident.”

“Do you just want to talk about Mom or do you have a question?” Derek asked patiently.

“Question,” Spencer said. “No, not question…” He pursed his lips together and hummed.

“Worried? Sad? Confused?” Derek supplied.

His eyes lit up. “Confused,” he confirmed. Derek took a deep breath and Spencer mimicked it, but it did nothing to quell his stirring emotions. Confused… Spencer looked at both pages, flipping back and forth, trying to find the words to explain why he was confused, but all that seemed to be in his brain was an overwhelming emotion of… hmm… he tapped the words on the page again… mom, he wanted to shout, but the words wouldn’t leave his mouth. Mom was here, in the casket, and she was in a car accident, and Mom was stabbed… how could she be in a casket… he had seen it… she had been stabbed… his dad had… Spencer tried pushing on his head to get the thoughts to calm down. How was his mom in a car accident when he’d seen her get stabbed? Had she lived all this time? Where had she been? Why hadn’t she come back for him?

Awareness that his hand was being pried from his temple suddenly flooded his system and he struck his arm out to get the offender away. It connected with something hard and Spencer brought his hand back, hitting his own head again to stem off the flood of thoughts barraging his swirling mind. Hands grabbed him again, strong arms around his back and he launched forward to get away, his body smashing into what felt like a solid wall. Then the wall grabbed him from the front.

Spencer shrieked in surprise as Gideon’s arms came around him, helping Derek hold him from the front. Derek let go and brought a hand up to his nose, blood gushing down, tears from the sudden pain welling up in his eyes.

“Sorry son, but this is the way its gotta be for a minute,” Gideon said. He managed to pivot around to take Derek’s place behind Spencer and then with a big heave lifted Spencer off his feet and walked quickly into the hallway. Shelley looked up from her welcome desk and moved to stand up but was stopped in place by a look from Hotch who had followed them out.

Gideon lowered both he and Spencer to the floor; an awkward operation, but after a few seconds of adjusting, the sat comfortably with Gideon holding Spencer from behind and Spencer rocking rhythmically into Gideon’s chest.

“Spencer, I want you to listen to my voice and only my voice. I know you are confused about your mom, both of your moms, and I want to help. Diana McAlister was born on May 9, 1954. She married William Reid in 1979 and they had a son, you, on October 28th, 1981. You and your family moved around a lot and your dad was abusive toward you and your mom. When you were nine years old, you saw your dad force your mom to murder a woman. She then took you to a gas station and found someone to keep you safe. While you were hiding, you saw your dad stab your mom, and then drive away with her body. Your birth mom, Diana, died that day.

You were put in foster care and moved around a few times until you came to stay with Fran Morgan and her kids Derek, Sarah, and Desiree. Fran adopted you and she became your new mom, and Derek, Sarah, and Desiree became your brother and sisters. You lived with your adopted mom, Fran, ever since, up until almost two weeks ago when she was in a car accident and passed away. Then you moved to Virginia to live with your brother, Derek.”

Gideon took a deep breath and started again. “You’re doing good listening to my voice. I know you’re confused about your birth mom and your adoptive mom and how they passed away. Here’s some information that will help. Diana McAlister was born on May 9, 1954…”

Both Derek and Spencer had become transfixed on Gideon’s voice. Spencer had gone still, his eyes both wide open and zoned out, but he seemed to be listening.

“Derek,” Hotch muttered, putting a hand on his shoulder. Derek let go of his nose and a fresh wave of pain hit him, snapping him out of whatever hypnotic reverie Gideon’s voice had put him under.

“Damn it, I think its broken,” he said, feeling the blood trail into his mouth as he spoke.

“Go take care of it, Gideon’s got Spencer.”

Derek walked down the hall, holding his nose, and ducked into the nearest bathroom. He looked at himself in the mirror, blood caked down his mouth, jaw, and neck, covering the front of his white button up shirt. He could see his nose beginning to swell but thankfully it didn’t look noticeably crooked. He turned on the faucet, leaving a bloody hand print on the knob, and proceeded to clean himself up. Derek scrubbed away the blood, an almost comical gesture while he was still wearing such bloody clothing.

“So much for making it through this day in one piece,” he muttered to himself. He didn’t think he had any substitute clothing in the Buick, but Aunt Yvonne probably had Spencer’s clothes from this morning in her car. He still had her car keys in his pocket from earlier; he slipped out of the bathroom and down the hallway, intentionally avoiding Spencer. The last thing Spencer needed was to see Derek covered in blood. Thankfully, Yvonne had Spencer’s clothes in the back seat and, luckily, he shirt he had worn that morning was an oversized-for-Spencer white undershirt which just barely fit Derek’s frame.

He should have anticipated Garcia waiting for him at the front door.

“Baby girl, I’ve got to get back to Spencer,” he said, making to move around her.

Garcia planted herself in front of the doors. “Not yet you don’t,” she said. “Gideon’s got him calm and they’re doing just fine. No need to be worried about Spencer. Its _you_ we’ve got to take care of now.”

“Garcia –.”

“No,” she said firmly, then reached out a cool, trembling hand and placed it on his hot recently scrubbed cheek. He seemed to melt into her touch. “Our knight in shining armor,” she said. “You’re so busy making sure everyone else is okay, and don’t get me wrong – that’s one thing I love about you – but now its time for us to take care of you.”

A tear slid down Derek’s face. “I can’t fall apart, baby girl. I’ve got to take care of Spencer. I’m all he’s got.”

“Derek Morgan. I’ve heard you say some ridiculous things, but that one’s gotta take the cake.”

He scoffed. “Sarah and Desiree mean well but neither of them are in a position –.” Garcia moved the hand on his cheek away and gave him a tiny slap. “Did you just hit me, woman?”

“A love tap to knock some sense into you,” she said, smiling. “Derek Morgan, open your eyes and look around you. You think Gideon and Hotch would have in a million years even consulted on this cold case, much less flown the BAU out to take it on? Do you think the team is still out here for the sight seeing? Do you think what Gideon did just now is in his job description? You’d be quick to tell any one of us that the team is a family, but when push comes to shove, you think you’re somehow exempt from the rules. You are a part of this family, and we are unhesitatingly, unflinchingly, unquestionably there for each other no matter what. You don’t always have to be the knight in shining armor. You’re allowed to be human with us commoners from time to time. Its okay to be not okay. We’ve got you.”

Derek didn’t say much through the rest of the viewing. He hugged his family, waved off concerns about his nose, shook hands, thanked visitors. He jumped through the hoops, floated through the motions, all the while thinking about what Garcia had said. Thinking about how Gideon had helped. Thinking about the way his team sat at the viewing for three hours. As he bid them goodbye that night, he didn’t have the words to express how thankful he was, and he didn’t need to find them. His team knew.

It was getting dark by the time Sarah, Desiree, Derek, and Spencer finally made it home in their mom’s Buick.

“I’m ready for a hot bath and to hit the sheets,” Derek announced.

Spencer’s eyes narrowed at him. “Why do you sound like that?” he asked.

“Like what?”

Desiree broke out into a giggle. “He’s right. You sound like you have the world’s worst head cold. _I’b reaby fo a hot bat and to hit da sheeds,_ ” she imitated, giggling.

“Do you have a fever?” Spencer asked seriously.

“More like a broken nose,” Sarah smirked. Derek hit the back of her chair playfully and she swatted back at him.

“Ooh, don’t hit him too hard. You’ll break his ego next,” Desiree laughed.

“Don’t want to wound that fragile masculinity,” Sarah teased.

Derek laughed. “Ain’t nothing fragile about my masculinity,” he said, reaching over and flexing an arm in Desiree’s face. She batted his arm away and began to laugh hysterically. It spread to Sarah, then Derek, and before long all four siblings were gasping for air. They parked in the driveway and Sarah opened her car door. The cool April evening air rushed into the car. Despite having a broken nose, Derek felt like he could breathe for the first time all day.

“We were gonna surprise you, but now that we’re here, I’m realizing that’s its probably a bad idea to surprise an FBI agent,” Desiree said.

“What are you talking about?” Derek asked. Then he looked around. There were two black SUVs, not including his own rental, parked on the street. He looked to the house and saw the lights on behind the curtains with the faintest hint of movement and shadows. “Des, what did you do?”

“Not us,” she said as they walked up the front porch steps. “We just agreed. It was all your team's idea. They texted us this morning. Ever since we realized that we broke the news of… you know… mom… on Spencer’s birthday, they wanted to help us make it up to him…”

Desiree gave a quick knock on her own front door and it was quickly opened from the other side.

“SURPRISE!”

Standing in their living room was the entire team: Hotch, Gideon, Garcia, JJ, and Emily. The room was decorated with streamers and balloons, there was a huge cake on the coffee table along with a fresh pot of coffee. Along the walls were huge printouts of people Derek vaguely recognized as famous academics: Albert Einstein, Marie Curie, Benjamin Franklin, two men standing next to a model DNA strand – all with speech bubbles proclaiming “HAPPY BIRTHDAY SPENCER!”

Spencer immediately turned to Desiree. “Its not my birthday,” he said, panicked.

“It’s a belated birthday party,” Desiree said. “Cause we didn’t throw you one on the actual day. Come on, all your new fancy friends want to celebrate you.” Desiree grabbed Spencer’s hand and pulled him inside, followed by Sarah. Derek stood outside on the porch, rooted in his spot.

Garcia’s face paled at the door. As Desiree, Sarah, and Spencer went in, she came out, and closed the door behind her.

“You hate it,” she said. “I am so sorry. I should have known. I said to myself, Penelope, he’s gonna hate all the attention, he’s already beating himself up that he missed Spencer’s birthday, and now you’re going to throw a freaking surprise birthday party just to grind in that knife a little further. And I know you must be exhausted after everything that happened today. Plus your nose, you should probably be at the hospital right now. I’m so sorry. But I’m also not sorry cause that boy is so happy –.”

Garcia’s rant was cut off as Derek pulled her into a tight hug. She tensed at the unexpected affection, and then melted into it.

“Thank you,” he whispered.

“No need to thank me,” she whispered back. “This is just what family does.”


	19. Chapter 19

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There will be an epilogue, but this is essentially the end of the story. Thank you all for following along to this point. I've appreciated every kudos and review, truly.

Chapter 19:

Despite having known Spencer for such a short amount of time, the birthday party couldn’t have been more _Spencer_ than if Fran Morgan herself had thrown it.

“Guess those profiling skills aren’t quack science after all,” Desiree teased as she surveyed the party with her brother. The atmosphere was light and happy despite the day it had been. It reminded Derek of the peace that settles over a city after a blizzard – the streets coated in glistening white fluff, kids having snowball fights, neighbors coming out and waving hello and digging themselves out of the snow. Of all the things to feel the day before his mother’s funeral… after all the confusion, guilt, and anger… he couldn’t believe he had made it to peace.

“I mean… a chemistry cake,” Desiree said. “How could they have known.” A mostly-demolished cake shaped like two conjoined hexagons sat on the buffet. Spencer had recognized it immediately as “Two C six, H twelve, O six molecules bonded together as a disaccharide” and laughed heartily.

“Sugar, we think,” JJ had filled in the rest of the room, who were much more amused at Spencer’s reaction to the cake than the cake itself. The party had also featured “Pin the Monocle on the Marx” and an ice breaker bingo game with a heavy emphasis on academics, books read, and languages so that Spencer would win. From throwing the birthday party to the interrogation to the viewing, the entire team in some way had been taking care of the Morgan family all day. Spencer sat on the couch, pressed up against, of all people, Gideon. As soon as they had come through the front door, Spencer had made a bee line for Gideon and had hardly left his side the whole night no matter how many attempts Garcia made for his sole attention.

“You want more cake? I’m getting more cake,” Desiree announced. She left Derek’s side and grabbed what looked like half of a sugar hexagon, then joined the circle around Spencer.

“Hey.”

Derek turned around to see Hotch behind him, coming in from the porch. He was putting his cell phone away, clearly having just finished with a call.

“That was the Detroit PD. Wanted to let me know that the search of William’s house turned up a few items they think are souvenirs. They’re processing them now. Not sure if its from the five murders we already know about or a new spree.”

“Would have been highly unusual for him to just stop,” Derek said. “Especially after losing his surrogate at the same time.”

Both their eyes unconsciously flickered toward Spencer.

Hotch held out a manila folder to Derek and he took it questioningly. “I didn’t want to have to burden you with this right now, but after seeing how Gideon used some of the information was in calming Spencer down at the viewing, I thought it might be needed for tomorrow. Just in case.”

Derek opened the envelope and immediately recognized the contents. It was a photocopy of William’s hand written confession and DVD which Derek assumed was a recording of the interrogation. “Hotch, you could get in a lot of trouble for this. Not only am I on a leave of absence, but at some point, that man is going to be on the opposite side of a courtroom from us. You can’t just hand a copy of the confession to a victim and a witness at a birthday party.”

“I know what I’m doing. And I know if the roles were reversed, you’d do the same.”

“And you’d tell me you couldn’t take it either.”

There was a moment of silence (had Hotch ever lost a stare down?) before both men broke out into small grins. “Thanks,” Derek said.

Hotch opened his mouth to answer, but a commotion by the couch took his attention.

“It’s 9:16,” Spencer had announced, standing up abruptly. The other adults seated around him looked up at him in surprise, clearly confused and taken off guard.

Sarah swooped in to explain before Desiree or Derek could. “Come on, you all know it takes 14 minutes to get to bed, and bedtime is at 9:30pm, or else you turn into a pumpkin.”

“There’s no pumpkins –,” Spencer started to protest, but Garcia cut him off with a huge hug and a pinch to the cheeks which he seemed to both hate and lean into at the same time.

“Happy birthday, sweet cheeks,” she said, finishing him off with a red-lipsticked kiss to the forehead. “Have fun scrubbing _that_ off tonight,” she winked.

“Happy birthday, Spence,” JJ said, saying goodbye next. “I hope you loved your birthday party.”

“Loved your party,” Spencer repeated to her, making her grin.

Emily left with promises that once they got to Virginia they were going to have a Russian film marathon at her apartment.

Finally, when it was Gideon’s turn to leave, Derek saw Gideon hand Spencer a piece of paper which he pocketed quickly. “See you tomorrow, kid,” he said.

The team filed out with smiles and well wishes, and Garcia made Derek promise he wouldn’t touch the clean up (“I’ll be back tomorrow Derek, and I swear if you’ve so much as touched a dirty napkin…”). As much as he didn’t want to wake up to the mess, he didn’t have any desire to do any cleaning. He grabbed the cake and put it in the fridge, then trudged up the stairs. He could hear Sarah getting Spencer ready for bed through the closed bathroom door. He paused in the space between his and Spencer’s bedrooms, listening to her sing some sweet song to him in her off-key but endearing voice. It felt like a long time since he had woken up Spencer that morning, anger thrumming through his veins. He felt like a different person now. There was an aching grief, yes, but also peace.

Instead of going into his own bedroom, he continued walking down the hallway to the final bedroom: his mom’s. Her room was still covered in papers and folders that the Morgan siblings had rifled through earlier in the week. How ironic that his mom had spent a life time researching Spencer but now he was now holding what had to be the most interesting (and horrifying) piece of Spencer-related information any of them could have ever imagined.

Then another sight stopped him – Desiree had beaten him to the bed, looking tiny amidst the pile of pillows and blankets. She moved slightly and pulled back a blanket in invitation. Derek smiled, remembering back when they were all young and would pile on their mom’s bed in on Saturday mornings. They would talk and laugh for hours about nothing and everything. Now much, much larger, Derek took up nearly half the bed as he stretched out next to Desiree.

She turned toward him. “You know, the whole move-to-Virginia thing, I knew you guys were struggling –.”

“– Des…” Derek cut her off. “Come on, I don’t want to fight tonight.”

“…No just listen. I was gonna say, I knew you were struggling and instead of being helpful, I was just a bitch about it. We all would have struggled. I know I said I was sorry, but I’m _really_ _sorry_ ,” Desiree said. “And I’m just saying it again because I know the struggle isn’t over. When you guys go back to Virginia, its still gonna be tough. But I’m in your corner, okay?” Derek nodded thickly. “I kind of fought Sarah on the idea of sending Spencer with you originally. I just thought it was gonna be like you, and him, and some sad empty apartment… I don’t know. I didn’t know. You’ve got this whole second family… I don’t even know what I’m saying anymore. I just… I love you both, okay? And I know sending you both back this time, you’re gonna be alright.”

Derek folded her into his arms. “I love you, too, even when you’re a pain in the ass younger sister,” he teased, kissing her forehead.

Sarah appeared in the doorway. “What are you two doing in here?” she asked.

Desiree looked to Derek, clearly feeling that he was the one who should explain his presence. “Honestly, I was looking for somewhere to look through this.” He sat up in bed as Sarah came over and sat down in the recliner in the corner. Derek opened the envelope. “It’s William Reid’s confession and a DVD of the interrogation. Hotch gave it to me tonight.”

Derek looked to his siblings to see how they were feeling. “Lets hear it, or actually, lets watch it. I’m not listening to my brother’s voice narrate what I’m sure is going to haunt my nightmares forever,” Desiree said decisively, much more sure sounding than how she actually looked.

Sarah took the DVD from Derek and popped it into the player under the TV. A few seconds later, the TV displayed the black and white image of William Reid. The camera must have been set up just over Gideon and Hotch’s shoulders because he was facing the camera but looking off to the side.

“ _This is the taped confession of William Reid. Today is April 20, 2006. The time is 2:26pm_ ,” Hotch began. “ _Mr. Reid, please begin by telling us about your wife_.”

William didn’t look anxious or upset. He looked, in fact, the opposite – like he couldn’t wait to tell his side of the story.

“Why does he look so…” Desiree began.

“Excited?” Derek finished. “He’s a narcissist. He probably never thought he’d get caught but once he knew they had him, he couldn’t help but confess. He wants everyone to know what he did.”

_“I met my ex wife Diana McAlister while I was a law student at UN Las Vegas and she was an English professor. We were married in 1979, right after I graduated. We had Spencer a few years later. I loved him, I loved her, I loved our family. I started practicing at a firm in Las Vegas, we had a house, we were truly that happy family in the perfect neighborhood, life was good._

_A few years after Spencer was born, Diana began to change. It wasn’t noticeable at first to anyone but me. She was paranoid, heard voices in her head, made life miserable for me. All these rules… can’t talk in the car because they’re listening, can’t watch TV cause they’re watching us back, can’t wear certain colors on certain days, eat pre-packaged foods, on and on. But I could cope with it in the house… things changed when she started taking the freak show in public. Got arrested twice, once for disturbing the peace and once for public indecency. I’m sure you can imagine how well that went over at the law firm. She was an embarrassment.”_

_“Tell us about when she got committed.”_

_“Third time she got picked up by the police they drove her to the hospital instead of jail. She spent a few days in the psych ward. Got herself diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia.”_

_“Why did you check her out AMA instead of letting her get treatment?”_

William laughed. _“And risk her telling her shrink about the padlocks on the closet door? How the only way to get her to shut up about the voices in her head or watch TV in peace was for me to knock her unconscious? Even though she was certifiably crazy, I couldn’t risk anyone believing her. I checked her out AMA as soon as I could.”_

 _“And what about your son?”_ Hotch asked.

William laughed again. _“That little piece of shit son, he was worse off than his mom. Don’t know how I got so lucky to play Nurse Ractched to my Cuckoo’s Nest family. But god did I love…”_

He faded off, lost in thought. After a moment, Hotch cleared his throat. “ _Continue_ ,” he ordered.

William smiled and looked straight at the camera. “ _God did I love bath time,”_ he said.

Desiree turned away from the TV. “Oh my God,” she said, “I don’t know if I can watch this.”

“They wouldn’t have given us this if it was too graphic,” Derek assured her, hoping and praying her was correct.

Sure enough, Hotch and Gideon didn’t ask follow up questions to that statement.

“ _What happened after you checked her out of the hospital?_ ” Gideon asked on the tape.

“ _Loaded them up in the car and just started driving. There was nothing special about Chicago, just the closest big city once we had been on the road a few days.”_

“ _Tell us about the murders. How many women did you kill?”_

 _“Five, including Diana,”_ William answered. “ _Didn’t know the others’ names ‘til you told me. I’d lock Diana and Spencer in a hotel and find some girl on the street. We’d have sex and then while they were lying there afterwards, I’d take my knife and slit their throats.”_

_“And then?”_

_“And then… well you’ve seen the pictures.”_

William took in a deep breath like he was about to explain just how each mark had been made on each victim when Gideon cut him off. _“Tell us about the day of the fourth murder – Andrea Maher.”_

 _“Andrea Maher,”_ William repeated, enjoying her name on his tongue. “ _The fourth one… she was unplanned. I saw her walking outside our hotel, talking to herself, from the moment I saw her I knew she had what Diana had. And god… I can’t explain how badly I needed that one.”_

_“If you were so mad at Diana, why didn’t you take your anger out on her? She was right there.”_

_“Because if I killed Diana, who would take care of the kid?”_

_“Spencer, you mean.”_

William nodded. “ _Diana was crazy, but I will say, for as crazy as she was, she was an amazing mother. That little shit didn’t deserve how good she was to him.”_

 _“Well I assume you made up for that,”_ Gideon said.

William smirked. “ _We had our fun father son moments,”_ he said with a smile that made Derek want to throw up. _“But all that ended that day I saw Andrea. I left the hotel and followed her, but I didn’t realize Diana and Spencer were following me. I grabbed Andrea from behind and pulled her into an abandoned parking garage. I raped her good and was about to slit her throat when I saw them. They were just standing there in the entrance, staring at me. I knew I had to do something or else eventually Diana would go to the cops, so I grabbed her and tried to force her to take the knife so that she’s was the one that killed the girl, I knew she wouldn’t turn herself in and risk losing Spencer. But she refused to kill her, she was trying to fight me, so finally I grabbed a piece of wood and started beating her until she was the one that was bleeding. Finally, I had to threaten to kill Spencer if she didn’t do it. That’s what finally made her take the knife and stab the girl in the throat. She didn’t know what she was doing. The long smooth cut across the neck, much prettier.”_

William paused for a long while before he began again. _“When she finally died, I started in on her, and then after a while I realized Diana and Spencer were gone. I ran back to the hotel and I saw she had taken the car. I started running down the street and that stupid woman, she had only driven two blocks to a gas station, so much for a grand get-away. She was alone. I told her to tell me where Spencer was, but she wouldn’t tell me. I threatened to stab her if she didn’t tell me, and she wouldn’t, so I stabbed her just like this -,”_ William mimicked plunging a knife into Diana’s stomach like they had seen Spencer do. _“And that was that. Put her in the backseat of my car. She was dead before we hit the freeway.”_

_“And you never wondered about your son?”_

William shrugged. _“Kid never talked, could barely feed himself, couldn’t use the bathroom on his own. He wasn’t a liability. Diana though… I knew her blood and fingerprints would be all over that girl’s body. As soon as I could I found someone to erase me out of her life, which wasn’t that hard pre-internet. She took the fall and it never got traced back to me.”_

 _“Until Spencer gave his statement,”_ Hotch finished.

The video ended. All three siblings were frozen in the silence and darkness of the room, letting what they’d just heard settle in to their minds and hearts. Finally, Sarah whispered, “Spencer will kill us if we all go sleep in his room with him, right?”

“Definitely,” Desiree said.

“Outside the door, then, yeah?”

There was another moment of silence, and then without another word, the three siblings walked out of their mom’s room, grabbing pillows and blankets as they went, and walked down the hallway. Sarah laid a comforter on the ground, and the three of them settled in front of Spencer’s door for the night.

 

* * *

 

Sarah’s 6:55am Spencer Alarm came too quickly. Her beeping cell phone woke them up just slowly enough for the three siblings to stare at each other in confusion until the events of the night before came into focus. Derek couldn’t help but groan as he tried to sit up, his bones as stiff as the time the week before when he had fallen asleep holding Spencer’s hand across the wall of luggage.

“Who’s doing the honors today?” Sarah asked.

“Can’t we just let him sleep in?” Desiree countered, yawning.

Sarah pushed her sister lightly with her foot. “We don’t want to borrow any more trouble than the day’s already gonna bring by messing with the schedule,” she said wisely. “Besides, the funeral’s at 10am. Can’t really delay much longer.”

“This is going to be a disaster,” Desiree said. “I can’t believe we’re letting him do the eulogy.” She sighed deeply then reached up and turned the doorknob of the door she was currently propped up on. She half fell into Spencer’s bedroom, laying exhausted on his floor, then her eyes shot open, pretenses of drama suddenly dropped.

“You’re awake,” she said in surprise.

Sure enough, Spencer was sitting up in bed, staring at them with wide, confused eyes. “You slept in the hallway?” he asked.

“Long story,” Derek said, pulling himself up. “Its 7 o’clock, ready to get up?”

Spencer held out a piece of paper to Derek.

“What is that? Is that the eulogy?” Derek asked. It didn’t look long enough to be a full eulogy, but he didn’t know what else his brother would be reviewing the morning of the funeral.

Spencer shook his head. “My name is Spencer Morgan. I was adopted by Fran Morgan when I was 10 years old.”

“I… you… what?” Derek asked. He took the paper out of Spencer’s outstretched hand and immediately recognized Gideon’s handwriting on it. He followed along with the writing as Spencer spoke the words he had memorized.

“Before I was adopted by Fran Morgan, I lived with my father William and my mother Diana. William was not kind to me. Diana took care of me as best she could. When I was 9 years old, I saw William stab and kill Diana. It was sad and scary. Now he is in jail and can’t hurt me anymore. Even though it was a long time ago, it is okay to be scared or sad. After Fran became my adopted mom, I lived with her for sixteen years. We had a very good life. On April 10th2006, she died in a car accident. This makes me feel sad and I know I can talk to my family about it any time I need to.”

“Gideon gave this to you?” Derek asked.

“Gideon,” Spencer echoed in confirmation.

“And it helps? This…”

“Social story,” Spencer filled in. “A tool created by Carol Gray in 1991 to improve social skills and help of people with Autism Spectrum Disorder cope with new situations or change in their environments. And yes… it helps.”

“I’m glad,” Derek said, noting that this was the second time Spencer had casually mentioned he was autistic.

Derek sat down on Spencer’s bed. “Did Mom write you social stories?” he asked.

“Sometimes,” Spencer answered. He was picking at cotton pills on his comforter.

“Did Mom ever… did she talk to you about autism?”

Spencer shrugged. “She never talked about diagnoses. She said she didn’t like them. She said they didn’t help anyone.”

Derek mulled Spencer’s answer over as he got Spencer ready. Fran had always been so resolute in her decision to make Spencer as “normal” as possible. No diagnoses in his school files or medical records if she could help it. It wasn’t that she didn’t want Spencer to be himself, or that she wasn’t proud of him just as he was. She just wanted him to have every opportunity in life, and she thought that the best way to do that was to make sure he went through life without labels. She had been raised in a different time, when having a disability meant you were a broken version of a “normal” person.

They drove to the church in silence save for Spencer’s intermittent mumbling of the social story. Even Desiree didn’t have any comments to make as they made their way into the church. She and Sarah were immediately surrounded by Fran’s friends, having been much closer to them than Derek since they had stayed in Chicago. Spencer was holding onto Derek’s arm tightly, his head buried behind his shoulder, making it awkward for them to make progress up the steps of the church. Just like when they entered the FBI for the first time, Spencer’s grip finally tightened to the point that Derek had to pull his brother into a side room as soon as they entered the church.

“We can hang out here –,” Derek began, but he was cut off by his cell phone ring tone. He looked down – it was the Chicago PD. “It’s the CPD. Do you want me to answer it?”

Spencer didn’t miss a beat. “Answer it,” he said.

Derek had to smile. When they had left for Virigina, Derek had entertained a wild fantasy of he and Spencer being crime solving FBI brothers. But considering Spencer’s knack for solving crimes and his obvious interest (not to mention he probably held more degrees than the lead directors of the FBI combined), Derek wondered if he couldn’t find some kind of work for his brother at Quantico.

“SSA Morgan,” Derek said into his phone.

“Agent Morgan, this is Detective Pierce. We met a few days ago when your family was here at the station. I’m calling with some information I thought you’d like to know.”

“I’m on a leave of absence,” Derek said quickly. “Any information should be directed to my unit chiefs.”

“No, sorry I wasn’t clear,” Detective Pierce said. “I meant I have information I thought your family would appreciate knowing. We got a call from the Detroid PD that the raid of William Reid’s house turned up a few souvenirs. Long story short, we were able to identify the third victim and give her family closure after almost two decades. Wouldn’t have happened without your brother’s testimony. Just wanted to call and let you know, and say thank you.”

Derek thanked the detective and pocked his phone, staring at Spencer all the while.

“Its not polite to stare,” Spencer pointed out after the seconds stretched on.

Derek wanted to laugh, but all he could do is look at his brother. His strong, courageous brother who had suffered beyond what anyone could imagine and now sat before him full of kindness and love, a brother who had made it clear over and over that he was moving to Virginia not to be taken care of but to take care of Derek, a brother who wanted to honor his mother with the perfect eulogy.

Derek sat down next to Spencer and tapped his messenger bag. Spencer dutifully handed him his speech book. Derek opened the front cover. “ _Spencer's Eleventh Speech Book. Here's to empty pages staying empty. Love, Mom_ ,” he read, reverently ghosting his fingertips over the handwriting.

“Its not empty,” Spencer said.

Derek took a deep breath. “I know, and that’s why I wanted you to pull it out. I know you had your heart set on delivering the eulogy because you wanted to prove to her you could do the one thing she always hoped you could conquer, but there’s no shame in letting someone else do the eulogy. Its not that I think you can’t, its just... I’ve been thinking about what you said earlier, about how mom didn’t like diagnoses, and before that, how you wanted to do this to prove to her you could public speak. Man, I get it, I really do. You don’t know how many times in the last few weeks I thought I was letting her down. I thought it was my responsibility to keep this family together, to get everyone through the grief in one piece. Mom wanted us to be happy and okay so badly, and every time we weren’t I thought I was failing her. But that’s just not true. At the end of the day, mom was proud of me just because I was her son, and she was proud of you for the same.

I know you feel like you have something to prove by delivering the eulogy, but you don’t. You’ve already proven how strong you are. You survived horrible things as a child. You’ve confronted your past. You got through the questioning about the police station. You told us about the murder weapon. Its because you grew up so well that Maria finally felt comfortable to come forward with what she knew. And it was your eye witness account that got William to confess to five murders. That call from the CPD was from a detective letting me know that after two decades, because of you, the third victim’s family is finally going to have closure. That was you man, you did that.

But regardless of what you’ve done or haven’t done, or if you can or can’t public speak, she’d still be proud of you. Because she didn’t love you for what you could do; she loved you simply because you were her son. And I know…” Derek faded off, unsure of if he should say what he really wanted to say.

Spencer looked up at him curiously.

Derek swallowed. “I know that not every who call themselves your parent treated you that way. What your dad did was wrong. And Mom – our mom and your birth mom – Diana and Fran, they loved you so much. And I know that all they’d want for you is to know that you are loved and for you to be happy.”

Spencer opened his mouth to talk again, but nothing came out. Instead he took his book back and turned to a well worn page. “When you have the good life, you fight to keep it,” he read aloud.

Derek’s eyes filled with tears at hearing his mother’s words. “I’ll always fight for you,” he said.

“Always,” Spencer echoed back. He opened his messenger back and hesitated… then pulled out a slim folder and handed it to Derek. He opened it up to find a few printed pieces of paper.

“The eulogy?” Derek asked.

Spencer nodded.

Sarah poked her head into the room. “Family’s supposed to be lining up,” she said. “Everything okay in here?”

“Okay,” Spencer echoed, getting up.

The Morgan family finished lining the sides of the walkway just as the black hearse pulled up. The driver opened the back and six teenagers from Fran’s church came and took their places as pallbearers. Derek stood holding Spencer’s hand tightly as their mother’s body passed by.

“Come on,” Sarah whispered as the family filed in behind the casket.

As they walked into the church, Derek couldn’t help but think of not so long ago when he and Spencer had entered the bullpen for the first time. How he hadn’t wanted to tell his team his mom had died. How they had hardly known he had a brother. Now, seeing his team sitting in the second row of the church, feeling his brothers hand in his, it seemed like a lifetime ago that he had been so closed off from his team. It seemed like a lifetime ago that Spencer hadn’t been an integral part of his every moment. It seemed like a lifetime ago that he thought he was all alone, left to fight for his family by himself.

It hadn’t come easy and there were still storms to navigate, but settling down next to his brother, surrounded by his team, Derek felt a deep peace overtake him. For as much as he had fought for his family, he knew Spencer had fought for him just as hard, and his team had fought for them both. Surrounded by so much love and support, even at his mother’s funeral, he couldn’t help but smile in appreciation for all he had.

This was the good life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really had no idea when I started this chapter if Spencer was going to be able to deliver the eulogy. The more I thought about it, the more I didn't want him to be Inspoporn. Besides, the story was never about Spencer "getting better" (whatever that means) but about two brothers learning to take care of each other and learning to be taken care of.
> 
> Epilogue will be posted in the next few days. Thank you again everyone for following this story! Please drop me a review if you have time, I'd love to hear the good bad and ugly of what you thought!


	20. Epilogue

Epilogue:

 

One Year Later

 

_It’s my birthday today. My friends are throwing me a birthday party after work. Derek told me Uncle Gideon won’t be there, but everyone else will be._

Derek watched his brother tidy up the already-spotless house, nervously waiting for their friends to arrive. Sarah and Desiree had each called earlier. Desiree had teased him about being a whole year older overnight which had rightly earned her a twenty minute long lecture from Spencer about the relativity of time, the limitations of the English language, and something about the orbit of the Earth. Sarah was graduating from her MBA program in May which meant there was a lot of talk about them visiting Chicago again next month. They had sold their childhood home, thanks in huge part to Yvonne, and then money had gone a long way to helping Sarah pay her tuition and Desiree get back on her feet.

“Come sit down and read a book or something before you drive me crazy,” Derek said. Spencer finished straightening out all the mugs so that their handles were perfectly aligned, then came into the living room where Derek was laying on the couch. He nodded toward the visual timer sitting on the bookshelf. “13 more minutes. So chill out.”

As if in defiance, the doorbell rang.

“Thanks, Garcia,” Derek said sarcastically, knowing exactly who would be too excited to wait to be on time, much less fashionably late.

Spencer dutifully checked the small closed circuit TV on the credenza before opening the door to a flurry of pink and yellow confetti.

“HAPPY BIRTHDAY!” Garcia shouted as she threw the confetti in Spencer’s face. He sputtered and swatted the pieces of paper away like bees attempting to sting him. She waited expectantly for his reaction.

“That’s littering,” he finally sputtered out, still in shock.

Garcia burst out laughing. “Derek’ll clean it up,” she said, slinging her arm around Spencer and walking them both inside.

“What am I gonna do for you, baby girl?” Derek asked, sitting up off the couch.

“Ooh, don’t ask questions you don’t want to hear the answers to,” she teased with a wink.

Somehow between the confetti and the hugging, she had managed to lug in two overflowing bags filled with presents. “I know, I know,” she said before Derek could, “but come on. I have to spoil my boy.”

Now that the door was open, Spencer was waiting on the porch, eagerly watching for the rest of his guests to arrive.

“Anyone heard from Gideon?” Derek asked as he helped Garcia arrange her presents on the table.

Garcia sighed. “No updates since you asked yesterday. I put a trace on his credit card – don’t look at me like that, its just to make sure he’s still alive. He’s still in the area, but we’re going on a week since we got back from Arizona. With Gideon gone and Hotch on suspension, well lets just say the BAU’s never missed you more.”

Derek felt the familiar longing in his chest stir yet again. After his leave of absence had ended, he had transferred to the Intelligence Branch, working as a liaison between police departments and the FBI, coordinating trainings, sharing information, clearing jurisdiction disputes. It wasn’t a bad job by any means, but he certainly did miss the BAU.

“I told Spencer that Gideon wasn’t coming today. Not sure what I’m gonna tell him if he never comes back.”

Garcia put a supportive hand on Derek’s shoulder. “He wouldn’t do that to Spencer,” she said.

But neither of them were too sure of that.

“Happy birthday, Spence!” they heard as JJ walked up the porch steps. She was followed in by Will, a recent addition to their crew. Spencer was bouncing on his heels as he showed them around the house. He had been in charge of his own party and had gotten a little too into the nerd theme. In Derek’s opinion, the house looked more like a conference hall with graduate posters set up everywhere rather than a birthday party. A captive audience in a lecture hall – Spencer’s version of heaven.

Hotch and Jack arrived next. Jack ran into Spencer’s arms; they had forged a special bond over the last year. They both considered themselves junior FBI agents, though Spencer felt his role was quite serious and they were all just humoring Jack. And to be fair, that was almost true. Spencer was working two days a week as a clerk in the FBI Record Office. It was a bottom-of-the-totem pole kind of job that effected little to nothing in the bigger picture, but there was no more dedicated public servant than Spencer Morgan.

Emily had been the only one to insist on contributing to the birthday party itself. She proudly brought in a cake with the word “gebryddaeg” on top and put it on the counter.

“Emily, I think you need to get your money back,” JJ joked, looking at the gibberish printed in icing.

“Geb-rye-de-day-egg,” Garcia sounded out.

“Je-byrd-daj _,_ ” Spencer corrected. “Old English, 13th century, _gebyrd_ meaning ‘birth’ and _daeg_ meaning ‘day.’ Its perfect.”

“Only one person had to get it,” Emily said, smiling at Spencer.

The festivities commenced – games, the cutting of the birthday cake, presents. Garcia, JJ, and Emily created a drinking game: one drink of beer for every time Spencer shared some factoid or corrected someone else, two for every time Derek got sentimental, and a shot if Hotch smiled. After an hour, the ladies were decidedly louder than the men when it came time to play Trivial Pursuit, Spencer’s favorite game. Two teams formed – Garcia, JJ, Emily on one side of the living room, and Hotch, Derek, Spencer, Will, and Jack on the other.

“This hardly seems fair,” Emily remarked dryly.

“Well maybe if you guys had paced yourselves,” Derek teased, mimicking tossing back a shot.

Emily reached over and playfully whacked him on the arm, then froze as she realized what she’d done. After they’d moved back from Virginia, they had discovered pretty quickly that Spencer reacted terribly to violence of any kind, even playful whacks on the arm. Derek didn’t remember it being a trigger growing up; it was likely caused by the repressed memories Spencer was now having to work through. Derek had gotten Spencer a great therapist as soon as they’d gotten settled in Virginia.

“Sorry,” she muttered.

“Its okay,” Derek said. “Actually, he’s come a long way with that particular trigger. I’m really proud of him.”

The girls looked at each other, then took two swigs of beer each.

Predictably, Spencer was carrying his team during Trivial Pursuit, when there was a knock at the door. They all paused; nobody was missing from the room. Despite the party atmosphere, the knock at the door had put each of them into “FBI mode.” Spencer, either ignoring or not feeling the tension in the room, got up to answer it. Derek could hear Spencer turning on the closed circuit TV, and then after another second, opening the door.

“Uncle Gideon!” Spencer said excitedly. “Derek said you weren’t coming.”

“I couldn’t miss your birthday, could I?” Gideon asked. As they came into the living room, all eyes were on Gideon. They hadn’t heard from him since they’d arrived home from their last case in Arizona, which according to the director had been so mishandled that Hotch was in the middle of a two-week suspension. It was just like Gideon to hold his cards close to the chest, to dip in and out in his own pre-occupied way, and in any other circumstance the team would probably write his disappearance off as just another example of their teammate’s behavior. But with the brutal murder of Sarah Jacobs at the hands of Frank Breitkopf in his own apartment…

“Gideon!” Garcia exclaimed, the first to recover from the surprise.

“Come join us,” Emily sputtered out.

Gideon surveyed the room, looking at the game like it was a foreign object. “I think I’ll pass,” he said. He looked expectantly at Derek.

“Uh, I’ll be right back,” Derek said, getting up. “Don’t start losing without me,” he teased.

“Yeah, you’re definitely the ringer on your team,” JJ joked as he walked out of the room and followed Gideon into the kitchen.

Gideon leaned against a counter and grabbed a beer. “Looks like a fun party,” he remarked.

“Spencer planned it, so, 50/50,” Derek joked. “But in all seriousness, it means a lot that you came. I know you’ve been going through –.”

“A few days ago, I got in my car and started driving. Didn’t have a plan. No destination in mind. Just got in and hit the freeway,” Gideon said, cutting him off as though he hadn’t been talking. “I wasn’t planning on coming back. I drove about an hour, thinking about Sarah, thinking about what she meant to me, what we used to believe. I’m such a different person now than when we first met in college.” Gideon took a swig of beer. “We used to believe in happy endings. Do you believe in happy endings?”

Derek leaned forward to look around the wall that separated the kitchen from the living room. “Life’s not perfect, but I’d say I’ve gotten pretty close,” he said.

“But it could be better,” Gideon commented.

Derek wasn’t sure if he should be insulted, defensive, or curious. “What are you getting at?” he asked.

“You miss the BAU,” Gideon said.

Derek nodded.

“I didn’t. For that hour while I drove, thinking I wasn’t coming back. Sure I’d miss the people, but the work? It doesn’t make sense to me anymore, not with Sarah gone. You know what made me turn the car around?” Gideon put his beer down on the counter. “Happy endings.”

He pulled a folded piece of paper from his pocket. “This is my resignation letter from the BAU. I haven’t told Hotch or Strauss yet.”

“So why are you telling me?” Derek asked.

“Because this is our happy ending,” Gideon answered. “With my resignation, there’s a spot for you on the BAU. And I’m going to need something to do in my retirement. Can’t think of anything I’d rather do than help take care of Spencer while you’re gone. If there’s one thing that still makes sense in my life, its being Uncle Gideon.”

Derek’s eyes welled with tears and he cleared his throat, not sure what to say, if he could even speak.

“Deal?” Gideon asked, picking up his beer again and holding it out.

“To happy endings,” Derek said, clinking his beer against Gideon’s.

“And to the good life,” Gideon added.

“To the good life.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's it! The end! Hard to believe after seven years its done. This story would absolutely have been abandoned if it weren't for all the readers over the years that favorited, commented, kudo'ed, reviewed... every email notification inspired me to keep on writing. So thank you to all of you who have been on the journey with me. Hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.


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